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Decision-Making in Medieval Agriculture

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Decision-Making in Medieval Agriculture DAVID STONE

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York # David Stone 2005 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 0–19–924776–5

978–0–19–924776–9

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

For Tess


Preface Above all, history is about people, their attitudes, and their actions. One of the main aims of this book is to put medieval people and the economic choices and decisions that they made at the heart of our interpretation of that period. As this implies, and as the first chapter amplifies, this is currently not the case. Indeed, the medieval period has in many ways become synonymous with backwardness; rational decision-making, based on a judicious assessment of known information, is generally thought to have developed much later, in the early modern and modern periods. In attempting to explore the nature and impact of medieval decision-making, this book concentrates on the agricultural economy. After all, approximately nine out of ten people at this time relied on income from land. Moreover, the documentary evidence for English farming is much more informative between the late thirteenth and the early fifteenth centuries (and consequently more capable of revealing the mentalities of those who worked the land) than at any other time before the nineteenth century. In essentials, the book is a revised and expanded version of my Ph.D. thesis. But as theses are written with just two people in mind (both of them examiners) while books are usually somewhat more optimistic in terms of readership, I have made every effort to make the published version accessible as well as academically challenging. This completely rewritten version of the thesis therefore includes entirely new chapters that broaden out the discussion in a variety of ways and, it is to be hoped, will bring into much sharper focus many of the issues raised. It is intended to be of interest not only to seasoned medieval economic historians but also to undergraduates and postgraduates, some of whom will be grappling with medieval economic and social issues for the first time, to historians (including local historians) whose main interest perhaps falls outside the period or places discussed here, and last but not least to the general reader of history. After all, history undergraduates at Cambridge, East Anglian local historians, and those people who got more than

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Preface

they bargained for in response to the otherwise harmless opener ‘And what do you do?’ have all helped to shape the way in which the arguments in this book are put forward. With this in mind, rather than unnecessarily cluttering up the pages by individually footnoting each source of information, the account rolls for Wisbech Barton (upon which much of the book’s case rests) are fully listed and referenced in the bibliography only. If history itself is about people, so too is the writing of history. In the course of the last ten years I have accumulated significant debts to a large number of people and I am grateful for the opportunity to acknowledge their contribution in this small way. Financial support from the Economic and Social Research Council and the University of Cambridge (Ellen McArthur studentship), generously supplemented at crucial times by my parents, Michael and Esme´ Stone, enabled me to study for my Ph.D. in comfort. I was subsequently honoured to be appointed to the first ever joint Oxbridge Research Fellowship by Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, a post which allowed me to continue to research and write with few of the pressures that other academic jobs can bring. The final stages of preparing the book would not have been possible had my wife, Tessa Stone, not selflessly earned money while I spent it, during a ten-month period that she endearingly referred to as my ‘sabbatical’. The nature and shape of this book has benefited from the advice of many people. Ted Miller initially pointed me towards the Wisbech accounts and kindly shared with me his extensive knowledge of the medieval estates of the bishopric of Ely. In the Manuscripts Room of the Cambridge University Library I received unfailingly cheerful assistance from Godfrey Waller and Peter Meadows. My Ph.D. examiners, Richard Smith and Richard Britnell, offered sound advice both during the viva and thereafter, and I also thank the former for lending me his microfilm of the account rolls for the manor of Hinderclay. Many others have generously read all or part of the book during its subsequent gestation: Keith Thomas kindly read and commented on the thesis when I arrived at Corpus, Oxford; the referees of the book provided detailed and constructive criticism; Tessa Stone contributed valuable improvements to Chapters 1 and 2; and John Hatcher and Mark Bailey read and sagely gave advice on Chapters 7 and 8. Similarly, participants at various conferences and at seminars at the universities of Cambridge and

Preface

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Oxford asked perceptive questions both formally and informally that helped me to think further through the issues. I am indebted to all these people for their comments, although the responsibility for any subsequent revision naturally remains my own. At Oxford University Press, Ruth Parr and Ann Gelling provided invaluable advice as well as demonstrating great patience. My thanks, too, to Mark Bailey, Bruce Campbell, Rosemary Canadine, Barbara Harvey, Kate Parkin, and Chris Thornton for permission to cite from their unpublished work. Mark Bailey first introduced me to the study of medieval economic history and has ever since given generously of his time and expertise to discuss and advise on various aspects of my work; there are not many people whose pulses race at the prospect of discussing medieval lactage rates over a pint at the Eagle and I am extremely lucky that he is the other one. Academically, I am indebted above all to John Hatcher, who not only provided patient, supportive, and thought-provoking supervision while I studied for my Ph.D., but who has willingly provided wise guidance ever since. My family, both Stones and Nibletts, may at times have struggled to understand why I have worked for so long on a book that will doubtless bring no financial return, but have nevertheless provided unquestioning support. My greatest debt is to Tessa Stone, who as well as providing an enormous amount of practical help and sensible advice, has been a constant source of encouragement and inspiration. We first met when I embarked on the thesis that became the book and it is to her that I dedicate this final version. D.S.


Contents List List List List

of of of of

Figures Maps Tables Abbreviations

xiii xv xvi xviii

Part I Introduction 1. Interpreting Medieval Agriculture 2. The Bishop of Ely and his Manor of Wisbech

3 22

Part II The Management of Resources at Wisbech Barton 3. From Agrarian Crisis to the Black Death 4. The ‘Indian Summer’ for Demesne Farming 5. Responding to Pressure at the Turn of the Fifteenth Century 6. The Last Phase of Direct Cultivation

45 81 121 156

Part III Farm Management in Medieval England 7. Standards of Demesne Farm Management in England 8. The Use of Agricultural Techniques in Medieval England

231

Bibliography

277

Index

294

189


List of Figures 2.1. Wheat yields at Wisbech Barton, 1313–1429 2.2. Fleece weights recorded in the Wisbech accounts, 1327–1428 3.1. Livestock units and muck spread at Wisbech Barton, 1314–1348 4.1. Index of wheat and mixtill yields per acre at Wisbech Barton, 1330–1372 4.2. Yield ratios of wheat and oats and estimated inputs in weeding at Wisbech Barton, 1338–1372 4.3. Mortality rates of sheep and swine at Wisbech Barton, 1314–1375 5.1. Sown acreage and mean sale price of mixtill relative to wheat at Wisbech Barton, 1393–1406 5.2. Bere: mean sale price relative to wheat and acreage sown at Wisbech Barton, 1393–1409 5.3. Rotation of crops on the main fields at Wisbech Barton, 1394–1409 6.1. Main sources of market income by period at Wisbech Barton, 1314–1430 6.2. Number of years in office of each reeve of Wisbech Barton, 1320–1430 6.3. Performance of Adgerestoncroft and Nymendole (2) in the early fifteenth century 6.4. Livestock units and muck spread at Wisbech Barton, 1401–1421 7.1. Sown acreage and sale price of barley relative to wheat at Hambledon, 1327–1346 7.2. National pig prices and numbers of pigs at Cuxham, 1301–1348 7.3. Location of wheat sowing on the estates of Bolton Priory, 1306–1310 7.4. Indices of national grain prices and agricultural wages, 1271–1304

39 42 68 93 112 116 130 132 137 161 169 174 179 192 194 197 203

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List of Figures

7.5. Difference between the relative price and relative acreage of barley and wheat at Crawley and Hambledon, 1327–1346 7.6. Wheat and barley: relative national prices and relative sown acreage at Hinderclay and Hanworth, 1290–1306 7.7. Number of sheep at Kinsbourne and national wool prices, 1350–1395 7.8. How successful were demesne officials at Cuxham at maximizing the total sale value of wheat, given seasonal changes in wheat prices? 7.9. Profits and expenditure at Elvethall, 1444–1514 8.1. Ratio between wheat prices and wages for reaping and binding corn, 1200–1450 8.2. National price–wage ratio and hired man-days’ weeding at Cuxham, 1290–1348 8.3. Customary reaping and ploughing at Kinsbourne, 1362–1385 8.4. Acreage of wheat and legumes on the Kent manors of Canterbury Cathedral Priory, 1322 8.5. The cultivation of legumes in medieval agriculture, 1250–1450

209

210 215

217 229 236 237 252 256 266

List of Maps 2.1. The medieval estate of the bishopric of Ely 2.2. The main demesne fields at Wisbech Barton

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List of Tables 2.1. Crop yields at Wisbech Barton, 1313–1429 3.1. Timing of sales of winter-sown crops at Wisbech Barton, 1329–1348 3.2. Gross crop returns per acre at Wisbech Barton, 1314–1348 3.3. Field management of winter-sown crops at Wisbech Barton, 1337, 1340, 1343 3.4. The impact of legume cultivation on yields per seed of wheat and mixtill at Wisbech Barton, 1313–1348 3.5. Correlation of crop yields per acre with stocking densities at Wisbech Barton, 1314–1348 3.6. Labour inputs in weeding at Wisbech Barton, 1314–1348 4.1. Sales of mixtill at Wisbech Barton, 1352–1353 4.2. Rotation of crops on the main fields at Wisbech Barton, 1362–1367 4.3. Cropping location of wheat and mixtill at Wisbech Barton, 1349–1354 and 1368–1373 4.4. Labour inputs in weeding at Wisbech Barton, 1349–1375 5.1. A measure of reeves’ cropping success at Wisbech Barton, 1393/4–1409/10 5.2. The cultivation and consumption of legumes at Wisbech Barton, 1393–1405 5.3. Correlation of crop yields per acre with stocking densities at Wisbech Barton, 1376–1409 6.1. The transition to standardized cropping of bere at Wisbech Barton, 1412–1424 6.2. The distribution of wheat and mixtill sowing at Wisbech Barton, 1401–1424 6.3. The profitability of cattle-farming at Wisbech Barton, 1413–1426

38 49 57 59

65 67 71 87 97 100 110 135 141 143 165 173 181

List of Tables 7.1. Prices and profits at Hinderclay after the Black Death 8.1. Estimated weeding inputs before the Black Death 8.2. Hypothetical crop rotation on Roger son of Nicholas de Wodecote’s land in Ashby-de-la-Zouche in the early fourteenth century

xvii

220 258

267

List of Abbreviations Chicago UL CUL HRO MCR PRO VCH

University of Chicago Library Cambridge University Library Hampshire Record Office Merton College, Oxford, rolls Public Record Office Victoria County History

PART I

Introduction


1 Interpreting Medieval Agriculture The classic image of life in the medieval countryside is of a hard, restrictive, and frankly rather monotonous existence. Contemporary illustrations show countrymen engaged in routine seasonal tasks. Communal regulations ensured that the large open fields in which peasants held their strips of land were used in strict rotation year after year. For some, freedom of action was further constrained by the obligation to work on the lord’s land as well as their own. Medieval rural life is also perceived as being innately vulnerable to the unpredictability of the world. The fields were weedy, the animals weedier still, and harvest failure and livestock disease are seen as a constant threat. Seemingly the only practical recourse for medieval men and women was to superstitious practices and religious relics; even wealth did not necessarily solve the problem, for the prevailing culture of status and power dictated that landlords’ money was not invested wisely but spent extravagantly on feasts, fine clothes, and the building of ever more magnificent manor houses, castles, abbeys, and cathedrals. Contrast this with the image of a nineteenth-century farmer, for whom enclosed farms gave scope for choice, individualism, and specialization. Some farmers were able to invest in new machinery, and technology was beginning to minimize the impact of nature; grain yields were higher and fat livestock were tended by equally stout farmers. The orbit of the nineteenth-century farmer is perceived as being much wider, too, for this was the age of the railway; trade was greatly boosted as a result, and we picture farmers thinking long and hard about the market, about profits, and about the best combinations of products and inputs. This was an age of information as well: nineteenth-century farmers might attend the

Introduction

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meetings of agricultural societies and follow the course of prices in the newspapers; the more educated among them might have a growing interest in the science of agriculture, reading and perhaps even contributing to the growing range of agricultural journals. There were, of course, substantial and practical differences between life in the medieval countryside and life as a nineteenthcentury farmer. But perhaps most importantly of all, we sense a transformation in outlook and attitude at some point in the intervening centuries. There was now more engagement with the wider world, but it was more than just an external, infrastructural change; it was an internal development too. If we could summarize this difference in one word, it would probably be rationality: we think of nineteenth-century farmers making rational decisions about how to exploit their land for profit, whereas the outlook of their medieval forebears is seen as ritualistic and superstitious, based on faith rather than reason. Indeed, the very word ‘medieval’ has connotations of backwardness, whether with regard to mentalities, the feudal system, or the apparently frequent resort to violence and torture. Why else would Quentin Tarentino have used the threat to ‘get medieval with your ass’ in the film Pulp Fiction? There is certainly some truth in this characterization of the Middle Ages. The medieval countryside was an arena where violence was used to settle disputes, in which landlords held sway over peasants, and where farmers could be at the mercy of the elements. With one or two exceptions, landlords were far from being capitalists, spending a massive amount of money on ‘conspicuous consumption’ rather than investing it judiciously as modern capitalists would. For medieval men and women, the impact of the natural world was an expression of divine judgement, and resort was often made to magical or religious devices in an attempt to protect crops and livestock against disease and weather and to encourage higher yields. Weather crosses were used to quell storms and there were ‘exorcisms to make the fields fertile; holy candles to protect farm animals; and formal curses to drive away caterpillars and rats and to kill weeds’.1 Even by the 1530s, if the details provided by royal visitors to monasteries in advance of their dissolution can be trusted, the keeping of ‘reliques for rayne and certain other superstitiouse usages, for avoyding of wedes 1

Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 35.

Interpreting Medieval Agriculture

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growing in corne’ was discovered and condemned at the abbey of Bury St Edmunds.2 Most historians believe that a more rational approach to farming developed at some point between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Although labels such as ‘scientific revolution’, ‘Enlightenment’, and ‘age of reason’ refer chiefly to intellectual and philosophical developments, economically rational modes of behaviour are thought to have developed at about the same time. But ought we to dismiss rationality so summarily from the medieval outlook? After all, the reputation of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a period of fundamental intellectual change has already been questioned.3 Moreover, belief in superstition does not necessarily preclude rational behaviour, or vice versa. Even today, in our ostensibly rational world, horoscopes are consulted, alternative treatments are increasingly popular, and many still believe that they can alter the course of events in non-rational ways, through lucky mascots, lucky numbers, and so on. Realistically, we know that these will not make any difference, but we are seldom willing to take that chance. In our psyche, everything helps, rational or otherwise; a belt and braces attitude to life. So it may have been in the Middle Ages, only we perceive and relish reading about the superstitious behaviour to a greater extent than the rational. In fact, historians working on English agriculture in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are now beginning to ask more searching questions about the mental world of medieval farmers. By its very nature, medieval agriculture is a subject brimful of facts and figures. But to study the agriculture of any society is also to study the behaviour of the people who farmed the land. And as the focus of historical attention has shifted away from describing and quantifying the agricultural information contained in medieval sources and towards interpreting and explaining the patterns produced by this array of evidence, so it has become clear that we need to explore further how medieval men and women thought about and reacted to the opportunities and the problems presented by the changing world in which they lived. This book attempts to reconstruct what we can about the mental world of medieval farmers and, in so doing, argues that we need to reconsider both our stereotypes and our interpretations of the course of agricultural development. 2

Wright (ed.), Three Chapters, 85.

3

Grant, God and Reason.

6

Introduction

Economic Rationality Economic rationality in agriculture is most easily assessed by looking at the extent to which commercial farmers took advantage of market opportunities to maximize their profits. Of course, profit was by no means the only aim—or the only rational aim—of farmers in past societies, yet economic rationality is chiefly associated with the responsiveness of commercial farmers to fluctuations in prices and costs as they predicted how best to utilize their resources for the coming year: how many acres to devote to each crop; how many of each type of livestock to raise; and how much time and money to spend on potentially yield-raising tasks. Farmers in any period would have faced considerable difficulties in making such decisions, for there were many variables to be taken into account: anticipating movements in the supply of and demand for the different crops and animal products was hard enough, but added to this were the uncertainties of the weather and the threat of sporadic outbreaks of animal disease. Given these problems, the prospect that many of their managerial decisions might not be borne out by subsequent events must have loomed large, a dilemma that was presumably greater in the era preceding modern agricultural technology. Yet decisions had to be made if the potential of resources was to be realized and a rational farmer would have relied on known information in making them, especially previous yields and current prices. Not so medieval farmers, according to orthodox depictions. Few sources convey sustained information about peasant farmers in this period, but numerous studies of the agricultural exploitation of well-documented estates nearly all tell the same story: medieval landlords and their officials were economically unsophisticated, inflexible, virtually bystanders in the process of change over time. Many are believed to have organized production chiefly around their consumption requirements, ensuring a predictable return irrespective of market conditions, and to have concerned themselves more with the eradication of fraudulent management practices than with investment and enterprise. Medieval monks are regarded as being among the most artless of landlords. Summing up her survey of the exploitation of Westminster Abbey’s demesnes, the land reserved for the lord’s use, Harvey maintained that the monks ‘probably did as well . . . as any other landlord for the period—they


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played a poor hand with some little skill’.4 More generally, Langdon has gone so far as to argue that ‘what seems to have characterized the medieval demesne manager . . . was the degree played by accident rather than assessment in his decision-making’.5 Indeed, for all their avowed differences, medieval historians from across the broad spectrum of historiographical traditions at least seem to agree on this point. Postan, the leading proponent of the ‘population-resources’ model, commented that ‘It is doubtful . . . whether even the manorial managers in their year-to-year decisions could have been much influenced by the previous year’s prices or the prices they were able to anticipate in the immediate future.’6 Meanwhile, the Marxist interpretation of this period squeezes out the role played by demesne farm management altogether; as Brenner put it, English landlords ‘did not have to improve—to raise labour productivity, efficiency and output—in order to increase income . . . because they had an alternative, ‘‘exploitative’’ mode available to them’.7 Most other historians believe that landlords’ investment in their estates was higher than this, but even so, as Raftis of the ‘Toronto School’ maintained, such investment and the financial responsibility that estate administration entailed ‘do not indicate a genuine capitalist mentality’ because of the ‘dominance of consumer requirements and the lack of flexibility in adjustment to market conditions’.8 Paradoxically, even those historians who have highlighted the development and impact of commercialization in medieval England play down the proficiency of farm management. Campbell, for example, noted that ‘standards of estate and demesne management were more likely to mar than to make productivity’, while Britnell indicated that medieval farmers must have been substantially less responsive to prevailing economic conditions than their counterparts in later centuries.9 As this suggests, economically rational decision-making is generally thought to have begun in earnest after the Middle Ages ended, with the first stirrings and then development of the capitalist mentality. Some historians view the sixteenth and seventeenth 4

Harvey, Westminster Abbey, 163, 331. Langdon, Horses, Oxen and Technological Innovation, 169. 6 Postan, Medieval Economy and Society, 259. 7 Brenner, ‘Agrarian Class Structure’, 33. 8 Raftis, Peasant Economic Development, 5. 9 Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 324; Britnell, Commercialisation of English Society, 117–18. 5

Introduction

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centuries as an economic watershed, when economic attitudes and language changed, concern with the market grew, and the husbanding of estate resources by landlords improved. For Tawney, ‘it was the development of the large capitalist farmer which supplied the link binding agriculture to the market and causing changes in prices to be reflected in changes in the use to which land was put’.10 Tawney was writing a long time ago, but his ideas still carry a lot of weight. As Wrightson recently put it, improving farmers at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were for the first time ‘drawn to the potential of employing reason and empirical investigation in agricultural practice and infused with a powerful sense of the possibilities of change’.11 Diaries and accounts from this period certainly reveal the interest that some gentry showed in agricultural improvements. In 1601, for example, John Newdigate ‘resolved to spend at least two hours a day in the study of husbandry’ and his diary was ‘filled with memoranda concerning crops and stock’ kept on his Warwickshire estate.12 A decade later the farm accounts of the yeoman Robert Loder depict him carefully basing his forthcoming sowing schedule on the previous year’s profits.13 Other historians believe that a clear and unambiguous link between prices and decision-making can only be established in later periods. Pollard argued that it was only in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that management made its first appearance in a recognizably modern form. Although prior to this there had been ‘some rules of administration and routines of management on the leading estates’, it was only during the industrial revolution that ‘ad hoc decision making’ was transformed into ‘the efficient use of resources within the firm’, through ‘the creation of the first true professional class of skilled managers’, ‘the rational and methodological management of labour’, and the use of accounts as ‘direct aids to management’.14 Much of Pollard’s work relates to business companies in general, but a similar chronology has recently been proposed for agricultural management. Overton has expressed ‘uncertainties about the extent to which farmers’ production decisions were determined by movements in market prices’ prior to the mid-eighteenth century, but felt that by the early nineteenth century 10 12 13 14

11 Quoted in Wrightson, Earthly Necessities, 186. Ibid. 203. Heal and Holmes, Gentry in England and Wales, 109. Fussell (ed.), Robert Loder’s Farm Accounts. Pollard, Genesis of Modern Management, introd., 26, 128, 160, 248.


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there was ‘fairly convincing’ evidence that this sort of rational response to the market was taking place.15 In fact, recent work on the late nineteenth century by Hunt and Pam has highlighted the rationality and flexibility with which farmers responded on a yearto-year basis to relative price changes during the agricultural depression.16 Farmers of this era are clearly thought to have acted in a much more rational fashion than their medieval counterparts.

Medieval Landlords and their Estates One of the main aims of this book is to investigate whether judgement on the primitive nature of agricultural decision-making in the Middle Ages has been premature. We may not have diaries for the medieval period, explicitly recording the way farmers thought and acted, but this does not mean that they did not respond to economic, domestic, and environmental stimuli and adjust the way in which they farmed their land accordingly. Nor does the lack of documentation of this nature mean that we are unable to recover any meaningful insights into economic mentalities. In fact, medieval sources—especially manorial account rolls—have the potential to reveal an enormous amount about agricultural management in this period. These detailed farm accounts were compiled annually during those centuries—primarily the thirteenth and fourteenth—when prevailing economic conditions prompted many landlords to cultivate their demesne lands directly. Although they relate only to demesne agriculture,17 are heavily weighted towards large estates and ecclesiastical institutions, and are representative only of parts of central, southern, and eastern England, manorial accounts represent ‘one of the most encyclopaedic compendia of agricultural information ever devised’ and are in fact unmatched in detail by other sources for English agriculture prior to the nineteenth century.18 They usually record, for example, quantities of produce sold at market or consumed on the demesne or the estate, prices of arable 15

Overton, Agricultural Revolution, 202. Hunt and Pam, ‘Prices and Structural Response’; eid., ‘Managerial Failure?’ 17 It has been estimated that 20–30 per cent of all arable land in England in 1300 was held in demesne, although not all of this was necessarily cultivated directly by landlords: Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 57–8. 18 Campbell and Power, ‘Mapping the Agricultural Geography’, 24. 16

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Introduction

and pastoral products, the acreage under various crops, numbers of livestock reared, and inputs into different farm enterprises, and they enable historians to reconstruct crop rotations and to calculate grain yields, seeding rates, and the productivity of livestock. As one seventeenth-century estate administrator lamented, ‘the inventory is so exact . . . that it cannot but give us cause almost of wonder’.19 Indeed, manorial accounts have been used extensively during the last hundred years or so to investigate the nature of agricultural exploitation on seigneurial estates. But they have never before been used to try to tease out how agricultural decisions were made by medieval farm managers. On the whole, historians have been more concerned with describing the techniques that were used, the productivity of the land, how yields changed over time, and how land use varied from place to place.20 Preoccupation with eliciting broad trends in agricultural production has naturally gone hand in hand with analysis of aggregated data relating to a series of farms, often at the level of a single estate but increasingly at a regional and sometimes national scale.21 Although these studies are invaluable for the information they provide about the overall nature, performance, and development of demesne agriculture, aggregation of this kind tends to facilitate description rather than interpretation and mask, not reveal, agricultural and technological mentalities. Mean figures for, say, the acreage under wheat, the yield of barley, or the weight of a sheep’s fleece are significant in themselves, but averages hamper any attempt to analyse the extent and impact of managerial decisionmaking on a year-to-year basis. Moreover, macroscopic approaches by their very nature focus on the quantifiable data that can be garnered from account rolls at the expense of the qualitative and localized agricultural information that is also recorded and which can be vital for assessing the economic behaviour of farm managers. The patchy survival of records for many demesnes has not helped to 19 Quoted in Dyer, ‘Documentary Evidence’, 13. On the compilation, development, and use of manorial accounts, see Harvey (ed.), Manorial Records of Cuxham, 12–71. 20 The potential importance of studying agricultural mentalities is, though, noted in Mate, ‘Agricultural Technology’, 251, and Farmer, ‘Woodland and Pasture Sales’, 104. 21 For example, see Titow, Winchester Yields; Biddick, Other Economy; Brandon, ‘Demesne Arable Farming’; Campbell, ‘Agricultural Progress’; Langdon, Horses, Oxen and Technological Innovation; and Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture.


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elucidate the role of medieval farm management either. The one or two accounts that survive for many farms can tell us much about demesne agriculture in those localities, and large numbers of these stray rolls—in combination with selections of accounts or averaged data from better-documented demesnes—have been used by Campbell to great effect in constructing snapshots of land use across the medieval English countryside.22 Yet while these cross-sectional profiles illuminate the geography of medieval level use, they are nevertheless, as the author admits, ‘static analyses of a dynamic situation’;23 if decisions were being made about how best to run a demesne farm, then such a process is hidden from view by this approach. In fact, where long runs of accounts survive for an individual farm they show that the nature of agricultural practice on demesnes could change substantially from year to year. For instance, the balance of crops sown on the abbey of Bury St Edmunds demesne of Hinderclay in Suffolk was subjected to considerable adjustment during the period 1314–47, with the cultivation of between 40 and 90 acres of wheat, 161=2 –60 acres of rye, 0–16 acres of maslin (a mixture of wheat and rye), 67–126 acres of spring barley, 7–47 acres of oats, 0–16 acres of dredge (a mixture of spring barley and oats), and 27–64 acres of legumes. Likewise, numbers of horses, cattle, sheep, and pigs on the Hinderclay demesne changed significantly during this period. For example, the number of pigs on the farm rose from fewer than twenty in the mid-1320s to sixty or seventy by the mid-1330s, before pig-farming was abandoned altogether. The Hinderclay accounts from this period also illustrate how labour inputs in arable farming could change from year to year or how, in terms of pig-rearing, the frequency with which sows were farrowed or the amount of fodder provided for them varied over time as well.24 Such adjustments to the running of demesne farms create significant difficulties for the type of aggregative analysis described above, but more importantly they suggest that medieval farm managers were constantly making decisions about how best to use their resources. Most medieval landlords were interested in using their estates not only to satisfy their consumption needs, but also to 22 24

23 Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture. Ibid. 252. Stone, ‘Medieval Farm Management’, 619, 628, 630–2.

Introduction

12

raise cash to help finance their massive expenditure on households, building works, and military campaigns. Many demesnes may therefore have been run to produce high cash returns rather than to maximize output. This appears to run counter to the axiom that medieval landlords lacked interest in financial profit per se, but an important distinction needs to be made between the net profitability of the whole estate, and the attitudes of landlords to generating profit from their individual farms and manors. Once estate expenditure had been deducted, landlords would seldom have made any money and may often have incurred a loss. But in order to pay for this huge outlay, few could have remained unconcerned about the level of income from their manors. Indeed, it was written of Abbot Samson of Bury St Edmunds, doubtless with some exaggeration, that ‘he was anxious above all to farm the land profitably’.25 Similarly, monks at Dunstable, a great wool-selling priory in Bedfordshire, appear to have been delighted by the death of the merchant who had negotiated the grant of the maltolt, a heavy duty on wool.26 A further distinction must be made with regard to the sources from which landlords were able to raise revenue from their manors. The reputation of medieval landlords as being insensitive to market forces partly stems from their management of tenanted land, which was the area of the estate economy in which they were probably most conservative. Customary rents were comparatively inflexible, and even raising free rents in line with market forces was not often as practical as might be assumed.27 Adjusting the way in which their demesne farms were run in response to prices, wages, and a variety of other stimuli would have proved much less troublesome on a year-to-year basis; a conservative approach to managing tenants, therefore, need not imply a conservative approach to the exploitation of demesnes. Some landlords may themselves have taken a personal interest in agricultural decision-making. This was probably true of small, compact estates in particular: in the early fourteenth century, for example, Lionel de Bradenham ‘was able to exercise a close control over the running of his manor’ at Langenhoe in Essex, which included making contracts with purchasers of his produce and occasionally paying manorial expenses out of his own pocket.28 25 27 28

26 Jocelin of Brakelond, Chronicle, 29. Power, Wool Trade, 79. Harvey, Westminster Abbey, 331–3; Hatcher, ‘English Serfdom’. Britnell, ‘Minor Landlords’, 7.


13

Even on larger estates it is sometimes possible to glimpse the personal intervention of the lord in agricultural affairs. For instance, the letters of Walter de Wenlok, abbot of Westminster between 1283 and 1307, suggest that he was ‘a man at home . . . with many of the details of the running of a farm’ and that he ‘took his own decisions about matters such as seed-corn and labour services’.29 Great landlords commonly sought the advice of centralized committees on a range of administrative and financial matters as well, although the composition of these councils and the extent to which they concerned themselves with agricultural minutiae is difficult to determine.30 Some may have drawn upon the expertise of external advisers in the framing of estate policy, though it is unlikely that there was a shortage of internal advice on such matters either: highly paid estate stewards often held a prominent position in these councils; the fellows of Merton College, Oxford, themselves made several visits to their manors during the course of a year; while one medieval abbot was heard to lament that ‘when his monks came together to talk, their tongues wagged not about the Songs of Sion, but about the progeny of bulls and the yield of fields’.31 However, providing anecdotal examples of the interest shown by some medieval landlords in farm management is very far from proving that lords and their councils in general played anything other than a supervisory role in the decision-making process that the direct exploitation of their demesne lands entailed. In fact, in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries the bishop of Worcester’s council seems to have concerned itself chiefly with ecclesiastical affairs.32 Stewards may sometimes have been directly involved in practical matters,33 but on most demesnes the day-today decisions about marketing, sown acreage, livestock numbers, and the intensity of cultivation were left to local unfree reeves to make and hired bailiffs to supervise, checked only from time to time by stewards and other centrally based estate officials. One aim of this complex layering of administration was to reduce the likelihood of fraudulent dealings by local officials. But, in keeping with the wider economic aims of estate management, the 29

Harvey, Westminster Abbey, 133. Denholm-Young, Seignorial Administration, 25–31; Page, Estates of Crowland Abbey, 45–9. 31 Aston, ‘External Administration’, 331–5; Thirsk, Alternative Agriculture, 16. 32 33 Dyer, Lords and Peasants, 66. Ibid. 116. 30

14

Introduction

effectiveness and managerial capabilities of these officials was also a prime concern. On the estates of Canterbury Cathedral Priory it was laid down that reeves should ‘cause the land to be ploughed, sown, and reaped, manured and cultivated, and all the waggons and plough cattle, together with the sheep, lambs, hogs, and all other kind of stock there to be managed and tended, as shall seem best to him for our profit’.34 More generally, a thirteenth-century treatise on estate management, the Seneschaucy, instructed that the reeve ought to be ‘the best husbandman and farmer’, and that the lord should ‘ascertain and inquire who acted well and loyally, who improved and enlarged, who made a profit, and who made no profit but made a loss’; on this basis, those officials ‘whom he will find making a loss or not making a profit, ought to answer for their doings and go away’.35 Yearly manorial accounts provided the means by which lords and their councils kept an eye on local decision-making, and by the turn of the fourteenth century the front of many accounts in fact ended with a formal, if rudimentary, calculation of profit.36 All this evidence suggests that medieval demesnes were more competently run than most historians have assumed. The economic rationality that this implies does not merely characterize the higher echelons of medieval society. Accounts may relate to the farms of landlords, but, in their dry and formulaic fashion, they can in fact tell us a great deal about the minds of the peasant reeves who managed their land for them. Chaucer provided us with a vivid image of a wily reeve;37 by reconstructing how reeves went about making decisions from one year to the next, this book tells the real reeves’ tale.

Environment and Economy in Medieval Agriculture While it may be intrinsically interesting to unravel the mental world that lies behind the facts and figures of medieval demesne agriculture, this is by no means the sole aim. Distinguishing rational from nonrational is important in terms of our broad perception of medieval society, but this distinction has particularly significant implications 34

Smith, Canterbury Cathedral Priory, 111–12. Oschinsky (ed.), Walter of Henley, 275, 293. Postles, ‘Perception of Profit’. Manorial accounts may also, of course, have been kept as ‘guides for shaping future decisions and policies’: Stern, Hertfordshire 37 Demesne, 5. Chaucer, Complete Works, 22–3. 35 36


15

for our understanding of the role of human actors in shaping agricultural development. By presuming economic rationality to be absent, historians have always leaned heavily on exogenous factors in their explanations of the temporal changes that characterized medieval demesne agriculture. Farming in the Middle Ages is usually viewed as drifting with the tide of environmental and economic change; indeed, the period from about 1270 to 1430 is portrayed as one of repeated and prolonged ecological and economic crises. Whether such a gloomy interpretation is borne out when decision-making is put back into the equation is a central theme of this book. Before the widespread use of machines, fertilizers, and herbicides, farming was even more of a tussle between man and nature. The influence of the environment could be felt in various ways, not least in terms of the natural capability of land to support crops. The ecology of arable cultivation was finely balanced: most fields had to be regularly fallowed in order to allow soil to recover its fertility; nutrients such as nitrogen needed to be recycled through the application of manure or fixed by the sowing of leguminous crops such as peas, beans, and vetches; and enough grassland was required to sustain the livestock that produced the manure. This, together with natural variation in the basic fertility of different soils, has shaped many interpretations of medieval crop yields, particularly with respect to the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Based primarily on Titow’s compilation of some 20,000 crop returns derived from the estates of the bishopric of Winchester, Postan asserted that these statistics demonstrated a trend of declining yields and suggested that this was indicative of a crisis of soil exhaustion brought on by the high food requirements of a rapidly growing population in a technologically primitive agricultural age.38 The blame lay partly with the need to cultivate poor-quality marginal soils but also with the growing ecological imbalance brought about by an overemphasis on arable farming; for Titow, a lack of manure was ‘the most crucial factor of all’, and he famously attributed the low levels of productivity on the Winchester manors to ‘a chronic state of undermanuring’.39 It was by no means only the Winchester estates that suffered declining yields before the Black Death, and Postan and Titow are not alone in advancing such a gloomy 38 39

Postan, Medieval Economy and Society, 63–79. Titow, Winchester Yields, 30.

16

Introduction

interpretation. Indeed, a recent nutrient analysis of arable cultivation on the demesne of Cuxham also came to the conclusion that falling productivity was caused by declining soil fertility, although due more to a leaching away of phosphorous than a lack of soil nitrogen.40 Not only did yields on many demesne farms fall in the decades preceding the Black Death, but they often fell further still in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. For example, arable productivity on demesne farms in Norfolk in the early fifteenth century could be as much as 25–50 per cent lower than they had been in the early fourteenth century.41 For Postan, low and falling yields such as these demonstrated the ‘continued malfunctioning of the fieldmetabolism’.42 He argued that the overreaching cultivation of arable land before the Black Death caused so much damage to the innate fertility of the soil that yields were prevented from making any substantial recovery for a century or more, despite the shedding of some of the more unproductive acres, the restoration of a more favourable balance between arable and pasture, and an increase in numbers of livestock. Not all demesnes experienced falling productivity in the aftermath of the Black Death, but even so such exceptions often lend support to the main thrust of Postan’s argument: these farms were generally located on infertile soils and returned very low yields in the early fourteenth century; a degree of ‘self-cure’ was only achieved by the shedding of large swathes of poor-quality arable land after the Black Death.43 The ecology of field systems has played a vital role in discussions of medieval farming, but the impact of the environment is not restricted to this alone. It has long been thought that the English climate deteriorated considerably during the course of the Middle Ages: the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are seen as a transitional phase between a ‘warm epoch’, from the tenth century to the thirteenth, and the ‘little ice age’ of c.1550–1750. Evidence from documentary records and dendrochronological analysis suggests that the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries did indeed witness a climatic hiatus,44 though in agricultural terms the impact 40

Newman and Harvey, ‘Did Soil Fertility Decline?’ Campbell, ‘Land, Labour, Livestock’, 175. 42 Postan, Medieval Economy and Society, 43. 43 Campbell, ‘Land, Labour, Livestock’, 176–7. 44 Jordan, Great Famine, 16–19; Bailey, ‘Per impetum maris’; Baillie, ‘Dendrochronology’, 114. 41


17

of a changing climate has more often been brought to bear in the century after the Black Death. The weather could adversely affect crop yields in a variety of ways,45 and provides an all-encompassing explanation for the apparently general malaise in recorded yields in late medieval England. As Mate put it, ‘the drop in yields in the third quarter of the fourteenth century was so widespread, not just in Kent, but in other parts of England as well, that it suggests a significant shift in climate’.46 Moreover, the weather seems to have deteriorated steadily after the turn of the fifteenth century: Brandon highlighted the extent of wet weather and flooding in coastal Sussex in the period 1409–39; Titow reported a long series of very dry late springs and early summers on the Winchester estates in the 1410s and 1420s; and Pollard suggested that exceptionally wet summer weather lay behind the severe famines of 1438–40.47 As Brandon commented, ‘the extreme weather variability . . . must be regarded as an important subsidiary influence in the declining yields so characteristic of the first half of the fifteenth century’.48 However, the most explicit argument about the impact of climatic change on agricultural output in the late Middle Ages concerns the yield of wool. Stephenson revealed a general and pronounced decline in average fleece weights on the bishop of Winchester’s estate between about 1370 and 1450, and attributed this collapse chiefly to climatic deterioration. He argued that this period saw a ‘significant drop in average winter temperatures allied to an increased frequency of very severe winters’, and indicated that such a change would have adversely affected the wool yield of sheep in three ways: excessively hard winters would have prompted the gradual development of a shorter, coarser fleece; restricted access to winter grazing, combined with falling fodder supplies, would have reduced stock nutrition and hence wool growth; and harsh winters and lower levels of nutrition would have made flocks more susceptible to diseases such as sheep scab, which brought falling wool yields as the fleece became ‘ragged and torn’.49 The appeal of 45 Heavy and persistent rainfall at sowing time was particularly problematic, though insufficient rain or low temperatures during the growing season and excessive rainfall during the harvest period could also reduce productivity: Thornton, 46 Introduction, p. xliii. Mate, ‘Agricultural Technology’, 255. 47 Brandon, ‘Late-Medieval Weather’, 5, 7; Titow, ‘Le Climat’, fold-out between pp. 342 and 343; Pollard, ‘North-Eastern Economy’. See also, Lamb, Climatic 48 Brandon, ‘Late-Medieval Weather’, 13. History, 458. 49 Stephenson, ‘Wool Yields’, 381–5.

Introduction

18

this explanation is not difficult to appreciate. The sample is large and geographically widespread, yet the fall in fleece weights was remarkably consistent from manor to manor. Moreover, cold winters and settling snow would have had a severe impact on the mortality rates of sheep, as well as affecting the productivity of those that survived, and death rates did increase substantially on the Winchester estates after the Black Death, especially during the months from October to March.50 Ecological change is not the only proffered explanation for low yields in late medieval England. Standing like a colossus in the middle of the fourteenth century, of course, is the Black Death. For some of those writing about the agricultural problems of this period, there is simply no need to look beyond the loss of 40 or 50 per cent of the English population. Evans, for example, suggested that ‘after the expansion of population in the thirteenth century, there were now, in the fourteenth, too few men to work the demesnes’.51 Hall likewise believed that ‘By the fifteenth century there was no longer sufficient population to maintain a labour-intensive agricultural system.’52 But whether through soil exhaustion, bad weather, or a sheer lack of labour, the general message is clear: the role played by medieval farmers in determining the productivity of their fields and animals was negligible; everything was essentially determined by factors beyond their control. Nor, it seems, was there much that medieval landlords and their officials could do about the economic fortunes of their farms. Sometimes this could work in their favour. The ‘Indian summer’ for demesne farming of c.1350–1375 is a case in point, so-called because landlords were seemingly fortunate that economic conditions favourable to the direct cultivation of demesne farms lasted for so long after the Black Death. The climatic metaphor is telling in this respect: much as with productivity, economic success at this time is not thought to have been engineered; instead, landlords simply basked in unexpectedly high prices. More frequently, however, the economic situation in the later Middle Ages was against them. As the pressure of population on resources shifted from high to low, so there were significant changes in the levels of prices and wages. For much of the thirteenth century 50 51

Id., ‘Productivity of Medieval Sheep’, 306. 52 Evans, ‘Medieval Estate’, 14. Hall, Medieval Fields, 37.


19

wages had been low and prices high and rising, but by the turn of the fifteenth century the situation was reversed. This shift brought many benefits for wage earners and consumers, but for large-scale commercial producers it meant only one thing: falling agricultural profits. Indeed, economic conditions are thought to have deteriorated to such an extent that they brought about a fundamental change in the organization of the agrarian economy of late medieval England. In broad terms, many landlords cultivated their demesne farms directly in about 1300, but by 1400 a growing number of demesnes were instead leased out to local farmers. Significantly, Bridbury grasped the opportunity to extend the climatic metaphor: ‘The Indian summer was struck by its first frost. And frost was followed by the swift onset of winter. . . . The big demesne farmers who had weathered many storms could not weather this one.’53 Nor is it only historians who appear to perceive cause and effect in this way, but contemporaries too: in 1388, for instance, the auditors on the duchy of Lancaster’s estate recommended that the demesnes of the two Northamptonshire manors of Higham Ferrars and Raunds be leased ‘because the produce from [them] is of no value beyond its costs, which are so great each year that the said produce involves a great loss to the lord’.54 As our picture of the agrarian economy in the years c.1375–1430 is coloured almost entirely by the experience of demesne farms such as these, this period is portrayed, from a commercial perspective, as a time of crisis in the countryside. Yet convincing though these portrayals of the power of exogenous forces in medieval England might appear, there are indications that demesne agriculture was in fact not in perpetual thrall to the environment and the economy. Indeed, discussion of agricultural productivity and estate management in this period remains peppered with assumptions, gaps, and ambiguities. Explanations of soil exhaustion rely on the assumption that medieval farmers used all the yield-raising methods that were known to them,55 yet we have no proof that this was the case. Almost as well known as the pattern of declining yields on many bishopric of Winchester manors in the early fourteenth century is the qualification that it was not actually universal: sometimes yields barely changed at all; on some 53

54 Bridbury, ‘Black Death’, 584, 586. Miller, Introduction, 22. On the use of manure, for example, see Postan, Medieval Economy and Society, 64, and Newman and Harvey, ‘Did Soil Fertility Decline?’, 124. 55

20

Introduction

manors they even increased.56 Moreover, as Hatcher and Bailey point out, if population in the later Middle Ages was held back by low yields on exhausted soils, then high rather than low grain prices would have prevailed during the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.57 With regard to the productivity of sheep, severe winters and outbreaks of disease such as sheep scab not only should have affected fleece weights but should also have caused lambing success to fall away, yet this was by no means a general experience.58 Similarly, in terms of the economy, it is clear that not all landlords were successful during the Indian summer for demesne farming, while the turn of the fifteenth century was probably not as universally disastrous as has generally been portrayed. After all, lessees were generally willing to take on the demesne land that was being leased and the rental income they produced was often well above the profits that lords had made from direct cultivation. By the early fifteenth century even the seemingly unprofitable Lancaster manors of Higham Ferrars and Raunds were leased for a total of £9 a year; the tenants must have been confident when taking on these farms that they could not only cover the rent in order to break even for the year, but also make a profit on top of this. These points strongly suggest that productivity and economic success in the Middle Ages was influenced by other forces too. Since the proposition that medieval demesnes were not run in an economically rational way appears to be open to question, the obvious area to explore in this respect is decision-making. How closely did reeves and other officials respond to changing economic conditions? How did they use potentially yield-raising techniques? What part did this play in economic success? And did the quality of their decisions vary? The nature and impact of decision-making in medieval agriculture is most fruitfully explored by examining the management of individual well-documented demesne farms. This book focuses chiefly on the bishop of Ely’s demesne of Wisbech Barton, which was selected for the unusually high quality of its documentation: it is served by a virtually consecutive series of 56 Even within Hampshire, trends in wheat yields per acre, for example, varied considerably. Between 1325–32 and 1340–48 yields fell by 31 per cent at Twyford and Cheriton, by 16 per cent at Alresford, and by 14 per cent at Wield, yet they fell by only 6 per cent at Crawley and 1 per cent at Ecchinswell, and actually increased by 7 per cent at Hambledon and 14 per cent at Bentley: Titow, Winchester Yields, 88–91. 57 Hatcher and Bailey, Modelling the Middle Ages, 58. 58 Stone, ‘Productivity and Management’, 4–5.


21

extremely informative account rolls extending over the period 1314–1430. As Britnell has intimated, there is a commonly held misconception that local studies contribute little to our understanding of agriculture other than presenting an unwieldy amount of data.59 However, investigation of the nature and impact of economic mentalities has to begin at a local level: only in this restricted arena can information of sufficient quality be garnered that enables us to start reconstructing how medieval reeves reacted to the world around them. Nevertheless, the potential significance of decision-making for our understanding of medieval agriculture is such that the findings and implications of this local study need to be tested and explored on a broader canvas as well. The last third of this book, therefore, examines standards of demesne management and the use of agricultural techniques in medieval England as a whole. Apart from anything else, it questions the degree to which the experience of well-documented large, ecclesiastical estates was representative of agricultural practice in the Middle Ages. We have comparatively few sources relating to smaller landlords and really only scraps of information about peasant farming; by dint of necessity historians tend to assume that what happened on the demesnes of bishops and abbots must also have happened on the farms of gentry and on the strips of land that were so essential to the survival of peasant families. By reaching an understanding of the mentalities of medieval reeves, it becomes possible to distinguish differences in the way that land was managed at different levels of society and thus to draw meaningful conclusions about variations in economic success and agricultural productivity. Sir John Oglander’s advice in the sixteenth century would still seem to ring true: ‘Read all thy ancestor’s books of accounts. It may be thou mayest find somewhat out of them that will be worth thy labour.’60

59 60

Britnell, ‘Agricultural Technology’, 53. Quoted in Richmond, John Hopton, 31.

2 The Bishop of Ely and his Manor of Wisbech In common with other great medieval landlords, the bishop of Ely had many calls on his purse. His day-to-day expenditure can momentarily be glimpsed from a number of household accounts that survive for the years 1380–4, during the episcopate of Thomas Arundel (1374–88). Medieval bishops were ‘civil servants first and bishops afterwards’,1 and Arundel had nearly eighty people in his immediate service,2 for whom he was doubtless expected to provide pensions as well as salaries and liveries. As a bishop he was peripatetic, maintaining a stable of twenty to forty horses at his rural retreats of Downham and Somersham and sixty to seventy horses at his town house in London, although when he was in the fens he would often travel by barge, as he did from Littleport to Wisbech in August 1383, breakfasting on the way at his manor of Upwell.3 As befitted a landlord of high status, the bishop of Ely was required to entertain lavishly: just a month earlier he had played host to Richard II, Queen Anne, the duchess of Brittany, and a number of other magnates at a cost of nearly £140, on top of which he bought new table linen for the occasion.4 Even on ‘normal’ days, and allowing for the fact that much of the corn and livestock was provided from his estate, the food bill for himself, his guests, and his household cannot have been small; indeed, the bishop had all his bread baked fresh every day, and even ensured when visiting Wisbech in September 1384 that crabs were brought for him from Blakeney, 50 miles or so round the Norfolk coast.5 Add to this expenditure on clothes (the bishop bought the best woollen cloth) 1 3 5

2 Miller, Abbey and Bishopric, 77. Aston, Thomas Arundel, 168. 4 Ibid. 183, 222. Woolgar, Great Household, 21. Ibid. 125; Aston, Thomas Arundel, 229.

Bishop of Ely and the Manor of Wisbech

23

and household furnishings, together with occasional expenses such as the payment of 40s. to a surgeon in 1380 and the purchase of a new chariot for £8 in the following year, and it can readily be appreciated how the annual cash expenditure of the bishop’s household could sometimes exceed £650, an amount approximately equivalent to £350,000 today.6 And this did not include expenditure on buildings. Although work on Ely Cathedral itself was primarily the responsibility of the convent, it is nevertheless clear that the medieval bishops of Ely contributed to the cost.7 However, the bulk of their expenditure would have been reserved for their residential manors. The bishops of Ely kept a dozen residences across their estate, including palaces at Ely, Downham, Doddington, Somersham, and Fen Ditton, and a London house at Holborn, as Map 2.1 shows. Many of these were originally constructed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but they required continual maintenance, occasional rebuilding, and sometimes the addition of new structures. As one Ely monk wrote of Bishop Arundel, he added ‘many goods to his church, by constructing beautiful and sumptuous buildings in his palace and in other manors belonging to his church’, including a gatehouse at Holborn.8 An appropriate example of the constant cycle of building work is provided by another of the episcopal residences: Wisbech Castle. The castle was probably first built in the twelfth century, but by the mid- to late thirteenth century it had reportedly been dismantled, having been damaged by flooding.9 Certainly, work on it was continuing apace in the early fourteenth century, for the castle tower was mended in 1332–3 using six ‘fotmel’ (approximately 420 lb) of lead, and a year later the bakehouse wall was buttressed using 6,000 bricks.10 However, shortly after the Black Death the castle was said to be in a ruinous state, with most of the great tower requiring reconstruction at an estimated cost of £400.11 There are references to masons and other men working there between 1369 and 1372 and to the mending of gutters over the hall and over the lord’s room in 1402–3, yet the castle was again in disrepair in the 6 Dyer, Standards of Living, 72, 78; Woolgar, Great Household, 105; Aston, Thomas Arundel, 235. 7 Stewart, On the Architectural History of Ely Cathedral, 86, 139, 140. 8 Quoted in Aston, Thomas Arundel, 263. 9 Salzman (ed.), VCH Cambridge, ii. 47. 10 CUL, EDR D7/1/3; Sherlock, ‘Brickmaking Accounts’, 60. 11 Aston, Thomas Arundel, 268.

24

Introduction

Map 2.1. The medieval estate of the bishopric of Ely


25

fifteenth century, before being entirely rebuilt in brick by Bishop Morton (1479–86).12 Indeed, all the manors on the bishop of Ely’s estate required considerable injections of capital from time to time, whether for the construction or repair of farm buildings, for the rebuilding of flocks and herds after episcopal vacancies,13 or for the occasional purchase of additional land. Yet the primary purpose of the estate was to provide the bishop with the income that he required to meet this huge expenditure. The estate, which as Map 2.1 shows comprised nearly sixty manors spread across eastern England, was divided into six bailiwicks, or administrative groupings. At the economic and administrative heart of the marshland bailiwick lay the manor of Wisbech.

The Economy of the Medieval Marshland We have become increasingly aware of the changing character of the historic landscape; in the area around the Wash, the degree of change in the last thousand years or so has been particularly marked. Since the estuary of the Wash was drained in the eighteenth century, Wisbech has been situated about 12 miles from the coast, but in the Middle Ages the Wash stretched all the way to the doorstep of the town. And not only was the medieval landscape of this region very different from today, it was also comparatively new at that time. Although Wisbech and the low-lying land behind it had seen some early occupation and economic activity, it was only from the late Saxon period that arable cultivation and more permanent settlement became possible through the construction of a huge, horseshoe-shaped sea bank.14 This cannot but have dominated the landscape, for in the 1430s it was said that the section running from Tydd Gote to Bevis Cross in Wisbech should be 50 feet high and 6 feet wide at the top.15 This was a land defined by water. It was divided into a large number of wide ditched fields, rather than the extensive open fields 12

Pugh (ed.), VCH Cambridge, iv. 252. The Crown held custody of episcopal estates in the period between the death of a bishop and the elevation of his successor, and generally stripped these lands of many of their assets, especially non-draught livestock. 14 Hall and Palmer, ‘The Wisbech Region’, 185. The name which persists to this day, the ‘Roman Bank’, was (mistakenly) given to it by Dugdale in the 17th century. 15 Darby, Medieval Fenland, 177. 13

Introduction

26

normally associated with medieval England.16 The prominence of ditches is clear from medieval field names, including ‘Next the long drain’, ‘Fenditchcroft’, and ‘Coudrainsende’, and the importance of them was certainly not lost on contemporaries: three reeves from Newton were fined 100s. in 1370 for having stopped the course of a common sewer ‘to the grave damage of the lord bishop and the vill of Wisbech’.17 The silt soils of these fields could be highly fertile, but the quality of the land and its suitability for cultivation varied considerably from place to place. As one fourteenth-century account records, a crop of oats was valued at 48d. per acre at Walton, but 40d. per acre at Beaudesert, 36d. per acre at Wisbech, and just 24d. per acre at Terrington.18 This was probably due in part to the relative danger of flooding, for by its very nature this was also a precarious landscape. The impact of great floods such as that of 1236 must long have been etched on the memories of the men and women who attempted to earn their living here. Indeed, a survey of Wisbech from 1251 lists several holdings in the town itself ‘which have entirely perished through inundation of the sea’, while the poverty of customary tenants at Walpole and Walton in 1315 was explained by the fact that ‘a great part of the land is submersed in the sea’.19 Medieval reclamation was a piecemeal process and, following the initial phase of reclamation in the late Saxon period, a second wave was carried out between the mid-twelfth and mid-thirteenth centuries. Land reclamation probably explains why the value of the Ramsey Abbey manor at Walsoken increased to a much greater extent in the period 1140–1201 than manors elsewhere on the estate.20 A massive intake of land from Wisbech High Fen was accomplished at about the same time,21 and records for the Ely estate from the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries are full of references to reclamation. For instance, Bishop Longchamp (1187–97) presented 800 acres of land at Wisbech to the convent of Ely from which neither ‘had ever before had any service’; Bishop Geoffrey de Burgh (1225–8) gave 400 acres of new encroachment in Wisbech and Elm to his steward; and Bishop Hugh de Northwold 16 17 18 19 20 21

Hall and Palmer, ‘Wisbech Region’, 185–6. Parkin, ‘Courts and the Community’, 45. PRO, SC6/1135/7. Crosby (ed.), ‘Manor of Wisbech’, 125–6; PRO, SC6/1132/13. Raftis, Estates of Ramsey Abbey, 59. Hall, ‘Changing Landscape’, 42–3.


27

(1229–54) provided the same steward with a further 180 acres of land reclaimed in the 1220s.22 Likewise, the Wisbech survey of 1251 refers to an ‘encroachment opposite Kellus chapel’ of 138 acres, ‘a certain encroachment towards Lyk marsh’ of 360 acres, and approximately fifty ‘new feoffees’ on three areas of reclaimed land totalling 1,366 acres.23 These and similar undertakings elsewhere in the fens help to substantiate the claim of Matthew Paris, writing in 1256, that: Concerning this marsh a wonder has happened in our time; for in the years past, beyond living memory, these places were accessible neither for man nor for beast, affording only deep mud with sedge and reeds, and inhabited by birds, indeed more likely by devils as appears from the life of St. Guthlac who began to live there and found it a place of horror and solitude. This is now changed into delightful meadows and also arable ground.24

It was presumably with the same sense of wonder that a new manor belonging to the bishop of Ely, situated on recently reclaimed land in the parish of Elm, was named Beaudesert—beautiful wasteland.25 Reclamation was common at this time of population growth, but in few areas can land have been won on such an immense scale. Indeed, the increase in the number of holdings on the bishop’s manors was far greater in the silt fens than it was elsewhere in the Cambridgeshire region.26 People appear to have migrated to the marshland in large numbers, presumably in the hope of securing some of this new land: some of the surnames in the Wisbech survey of 1251 refer to nearby villages, such as Walpole, Tilney, Upwell, Leverington, Fitton End, and Newton; but others suggest migration from further afield, including Lynn and Dereham in Norfolk, Burwell and Caxton in southern Cambridgeshire, Littlebury and Halstead in Essex, and even Melksham in Wiltshire and Derby in the north midlands.27 These were buoyant times for the marshland 22

Miller, Abbey and Bishopric, 96; Hallam, ‘New Settlement’, 172–3. Crosby (ed.), ‘Manor of Wisbech’, 124, 127–8. As befits newly reclaimed land, the tenancies appear to have been organized in neat blocks, frequently of 10 or 24 Quoted in Darby, Medieval Fenland, 52. 20 acres. 25 Beaudesert is constantly referred to in the Wisbech accounts of the first half of the 14th century; the manor was situated in the area of Waldersey. 26 The number of holdings in the marshland manors increased by a factor of 17.8 between 1086 and 1251, compared to multiples of 7.5 in Doddington and March, 3.0–3.1 in the Isle of Ely and southern Cambridgeshire, and 1.9 just over the Essex border: Hallam, ‘Population Movements’, 540, 542. 27 Crosby (ed.), ‘Manor of Wisbech’, 125–8. 23

28

Introduction

economy, and at some point before 1222 the marketplace at Wisbech was moved from its old triangular site on the North Brink to a much larger, rectangular site just in front of the recently built Wisbech Castle. The bishop probably took up the direct cultivation of his marshland demesnes at the turn of the thirteenth century as well. A wide variety of crops could be grown on fenland silt soils, but oats tended to dominate as they are better able than other crops to withstand a wet environment. A fourteenth-century vacancy account tells of 1051=2 acres of land sown with oats at Terrington,28 while in 1321–2 the Wisbech reeve sent 921=2 quarters of oats to the demesne of Beaudesert for sowing,29 and it was not just the Ely demesnes: on the manor of Coldham, in Elm, oats were sown on 630 out of 860 acres of land in 1308; and over a century later huge quantities of oats were sent to Ramsey Abbey from its marshland manor of Walsoken.30 Sheep were particularly common on the rich fenland pastures—at Beaudesert, for example, the sheep flock produced an average of nearly 400 fleeces each year between 1330 and 1344—but pigs and cattle were also prominent, with many being sent from the bishop’s marshland manors bound for consumption at his various residences. This environment could be productive in many other ways. There were several fisheries belonging to the manor of Wisbech alone; indeed, in the 1350s the reeves of Walton and Leverington each sent a porpoise to Wisbech Castle, and the reeve of Terrington a swordfish.31 Swans are mentioned at Wisbech Castle in the years before the Black Death and, later, on the pond at Elm.32 Small amounts of hemp and flax were grown.33 Reeds and sedge were abundant, and were sent to Wisbech in particularly large quantities from Elm. Peat turves were occasionally dug ‘in the marsh’, sometimes as fuel for firing bricks at Wisbech: in 1333–4 the kiln there produced 120,000 bricks.34 A vacancy account of 1315 mentions ‘Le Saltemersh’ at Terrington and the sale of 221=2 quarters of salt 28

PRO, SC6/1135/7. The seeding rate at Wisbech that year suggests that this would have been enough to sow about 150 acres of land. 30 Miller, Abbey and Bishopric, 79; Raftis, Estates of Ramsey Abbey, 290. 31 PRO, SC6/1132/13, SC6/1135/7; CUL, EDR D7/1/10. 32 CUL, EDR D7/1/3; Stone, ‘Consumption and Supply’. 33 For flax at Terrington, see PRO, SC6/1135/7. 34 Sherlock, ‘Brickmaking Accounts’, 59–60. 29


29

from the manor in 91=2 weeks; there was also a demesne salt-pit at Tydd in 1251, while archaeologists have revealed seven small salterns there dating from the medieval period.35 Yet by the turn of the fourteenth century optimism was gradually being replaced by pessimism. The Wisbech estuary had been silting up for many years, and during the thirteenth century the Ouse eventually changed its course, diverting away from Wisbech and Walsoken, towards Wiggenhall and Lynn.36 Indeed, in 1338 it was stated that ‘the sands were grown to that height in those channels wherein it had formerly passed, that the waters of the said town of Walsokne could not drain any longer that way’.37 If this was so, the effects on trade in and around Wisbech must have been catastrophic. On top of this, the economy in general was turning. The only demesne land leased out at Wisbech Barton in 1313–14 was 160 acres of reclaimed pasture in the far south-western corner of the manor.38 But after the severe weather conditions and poor harvests of the years 1315–17, receipts from crop sales plummeted and direct arable cultivation at Wisbech was substantially curtailed. In fact, some nearby demesnes were immediately leased: the prior of the convent of Ely, for example, leased out their manor at Wisbech St Mary in 1325.39 Nor did conditions improve over the next few decades. As Miller noted, agricultural income from Wisbech Barton ‘in the years 1333–48 had fallen by about two-thirds from what it had been in the years 1319–33’.40 And then the Black Death arrived. Vacancies among the beneficed clergy in the diocese of Ely suggest that in this area the disease ‘first became virulent in March 1349’ and ‘reached its peak of infection in the months of May and June’, a timing that fits well with the course of tenant deaths on the Crowland Abbey manors of Cottenham, Oakington, and Dry Drayton. Levels of mortality are harder to establish, but both these sources suggest that death rates 35

PRO, SC6/1132/13; Crosby (ed.), ‘Manor of Tyd’, 64; Hall and Palmer, ‘Wisbech Region’, 183. 36 Two diversions took place: first, rather than flowing from Outwell to Wisbech, the river was instead diverted east along the Well Creek before turning north to Wiggenhall and Lynn; secondly, the waters of the Little Ouse and Wissey, coming from the east, turned towards Lynn rather earlier instead of continuing on towards 37 Littleport and Welney. Darby, Medieval Fenland, 94–100. 38 Situated on the banks of the river Nene, this land (Le Inlyk) was probably prone to regular inundation for it was leased for just 4d. per acre. 39 40 Evans, ‘Medieval Estate’, 14. Miller, Abbey and Bishopric, 105.

30

Introduction

of 45–50 per cent of the population were not unusual.41 Less information is available for the area around Wisbech, though the arrival of plague is indicated by sharp upward movements in wages in the Wisbech accounts from July 1349. Otherwise, the most immediate manifestation of the passage of the Black Death appears in the paragraph in the Wisbech accounts listing receipts from the lease of portions of demesne land: the total amount leased suddenly collapsed in the wake of the plague, from 352 acres in 1349 to 130 acres in 1351.42 This must have been caused chiefly by the death of lessees, for much of this land was subsequently leased out again as soon as other suitable lessees could be found.43 Trade was clearly hit, too, for the value of the lease of the market and fair at Wisbech declined steadily from £13 in 1347–8 to £6 13s. 4d. in 1354–5.44 The economic buoyancy that had encouraged the bishop of Ely to invest heavily in this region was over. It is indicative of the mood of the age that the manor of Beaudesert was no longer considered a ‘beautiful wasteland’, for after the 1350s it was simply referred to as Waldersey.45 We hear of ‘Wasteshowses’ at Wisbech in 1370–1, while direct demesne cultivation at Tydd, Terrington, Walpole, and Walton may well have ceased after the 1370s. Signs of economic decline are even clearer in the fifteenth century, for the value of the lease of the market and fair at Wisbech fell by 47 per cent between the 1410s and the 1440s.46 The demesne at Wisbech Barton was eventually leased in its entirety for £48 in 1429 and remained at farm for the remainder of the fifteenth century, though the annual rent had dropped to £35 by 1480, before recovering slightly to £37 at the end of the century.47 Gloom cannot have been all-pervading in the later Middle Ages, for a new stone bridge is mentioned in the Wisbech accounts from 1365 onwards,48 a few 41 Aberth, ‘Black Death’, 278–81; Page, Estates of Crowland Abbey, 121; Ravensdale, ‘Population Changes’, 198. 42 This excludes Le Inlyk, which had constantly been at lease. 43 The reletting of demesne plots was sometimes accompanied by a small reduction in rent, but by the 1360s the mean annual rent for demesne land had fallen considerably. 44 CUL, EDR D7/1/7–10. As elsewhere, 1349 was not the only outbreak of plague: indeed, that of 1368–9 was labelled the ‘magnam pestilence’ in the Wisbech accounts. 45 The change of name occurred between 1354 and 1361. The immediate motivation may well have been the flooding reported in 1356: Pugh (ed.), VCH 46 CUL, EDR D7/1/13–D7/2/15. Cambridge, iv. 244. 47 CUL, EDR D8/4/8, 26, 34. 48 See also Parkin, ‘Courts and the Community’, 51.


31

people continued to migrate to this area even in the fifteenth century,49 and the fair, which had been granted in 1327, was still attracting custom from Thetford Priory in the 1520s and 1530s.50 But in contrast to the expansion and change of earlier centuries, the later Middle Ages was overwhelmingly a time of economic decline.

The Demesne Farm of Wisbech Barton The series of account rolls for Wisbech Barton begins in September 1313; thereafter, accounts survive for seventy-eight years in the period up to September 1429, when the demesne was leased. Seven years are only partially covered because of vacancies in the bishopric and approximately two-fifths of accounts are torn or otherwise damaged, but even so the coverage is extraordinarily good, with about two-thirds of all the yearly accounts that were produced still extant.51 Crucially, the series contains long runs of consecutive accounts, enabling the type of year-to-year analysis that yields insights into economic mentalities: just four accounts are missing for the period September 1329 to September 1354; a further two are missing between October 1361 and September 1378; and two more are missing for the period September 1392 to September 1429.52 Not as many accounts survive as for the bishop of Winchester’s estate, but the Wisbech series is more detailed, since these are the original reeves’ accounts rather than centrally compiled pipe rolls; they were drawn up by the reeve prior to the arrival of the auditor each September and, with the additions and amendments that were subsequently made, represent ‘a dynamic record, a dialogue’ between the two of them.53 49

Raftis, Estates of Ramsey Abbey, 284. Calendar of Charter Rolls, iv. 11; Dymond (ed.), Register of Thetford Priory, 424, 612, 628, 682, 700. 51 One undated fragment in the collection was found to be the torn-off bottom part of the 1351/2 account. 52 On top of this, five accounts survive for the period Sept. 1313 to Sept. 1329 and two for the years Sept. 1378 to Sept. 1392. The gap in the series between 1354 and the arrival of Simon de Langham as bishop in 1361 coincides with the flight of Bishop Thomas de Lisle and the seizure of his temporalities in 1356 (for which, see Aberth, Criminal Churchmen, 136–42). There is a similar gap in other series of accounts for 53 Harvey (ed.), Manorial Records of Cuxham, 43. the estate. 50

32

Introduction

The estate auditor was not the only central official who played a part in the administration of the Wisbech demesne.54 Arrangements for sending grain, livestock, and occasionally cash to the bishop’s household were made with the bishop’s wardrober, while most of the cash profits from the manor were collected by the receiver, who was based at the bishop’s exchequer in Ely. Moreover, the chief steward clearly travelled up to Wisbech from time to time: he visited the manor for three days to take the view of account in February 1333, stayed at Wisbech Castle in 1382–3, and in 1417–18 held a leet court at the manor and supervised the repair of ditches. The steward was also responsible for implementing certain strategic decisions, such as the order to relax customary works at Wisbech in 1421–2.55 But, with the exception of major strategic decisions, the bulk of the decision-making rested in the hands of local officials. A hired bailiff was employed at Wisbech Barton until 1334, receiving a handsome salary of between 50s. and 60s. a year. His main role was probably to supervise the reeve, ensuring that the latter was not behaving fraudulently; indeed, the reeve often relied on the bailiff to warrant his tallies for the issues of the grange. Another level of agricultural supervision was provided by the reap reeve and beadle, who were elected from the tenantry; their main agricultural responsibility was to oversee the harvesting of crops, for which they received a small wage. But by far the most significant official at Wisbech was the reeve. As Miller put it, ‘it was upon the reeve that primary responsibility rested for the whole conduct of the manorial economy’.56 The customary tenants of Wisbech nominated four men as candidates for the office of reeve for the coming year, one of whom was subsequently chosen by the lord, or in practice his steward.57 If they 54 Unfortunately, the accounts shed no light on the role of the bishop’s council. The council is mentioned in a Littleport court roll of 1319 (with members including a former and the current chief steward) and occasionally in the sacrist’s rolls of the Priory of Ely, but otherwise remains a shadowy body: Maitland and Baildon (eds.), Court Baron, 127; Miller, Abbey and Bishopric, 268; Aston, Thomas Arundel, 182. 55 The steward also arranged the lease of the demesne of Great Shelford: Miller, Abbey and Bishopric, 262–3. Under the steward in the estate administrative structure were sub-stewards, effectively one for each of the six bailiwicks by 1299, although in the marshland bailiwick the job was done by the constable of Wisbech Castle. But while large quantities of oats were sent from Wisbech Barton to the castle for the horses of the constable, he seems to have played little part in the management of the 56 Miller, Abbey and Bishopric, 253. demesne. 57 Parkin, ‘Courts and the Community’, 111.


33

proved good at their job, reeves often served for more than one year: John Mariot, for example, served as reeve from at least September 1326 to September 1333; John de Tydd held office from January 1366 to at least September 1378; and Martin Dousing was reeve from September 1403 to September 1410. Indeed, it seems that the bishop went out of his way to secure the services of a good reeve: in John de Tydd’s first full year as reeve he was allowed 20s. off his debt to the lord ‘for laudable service’. From the reeve’s perspective, the most tangible benefits included exemption from customary services, a small amount of money or food each year at harvest (11=2 d. per day in the 1320s and 1330s, effectively totalling 7s. 41=2 d.), and exemption from serving as juror.58 But reeves were probably also exempted from paying some if not all of their cash rents and other customary payments, and may well have benefited from a wide range of informal opportunities for personal gain.59 The Wisbech demesne contributed significantly to the bishop of Ely’s need for cash, producing an average of £84 per year in money alone between 1314 and 1334, rising to an exceptional £159 in 1331/2.60 But the bishop expected more than just cash. Corn from the Wisbech fields, especially oats, was distributed around the estate in great quantity, often reflecting movements of the lord’s household and horses. For example, in 1363–4 oats were sent to Wisbech Castle, Ely, Somersham, Fen Ditton (together with 20 quarters of wheat), and even Holborn in London, the total value of which amounted to £36 13s. 9d. Moving bulky produce such as this around the estate was rendered comparatively cheap by the fenland waterways that stretched far inland: in 1352, for instance, 60 quarters of oats were taken from Wisbech to Fen Ditton by boat, a journey that took six days and involved four customary tenants using forty-eight half-day labour services, accompanied by a supervisor. Yearling sheep from Wisbech were also distributed around the estate in great number, chiefly to Beaudesert, Terrington, Doddington, Somersham, and Colne. Again, many of the journeys 58

For the latter, see ibid. At Cuxham, for example, Robert Oldman, who served as reeve for over thirtyeight years, was a prosperous man when he died in office: Harvey, Medieval Oxfordshire Village, 65–72. 60 To put this in context, the building of a huge tiled barn on the bishop of Winchester’s manor of Ivinghoe in 1309–10 cost £83: Dyer, Standards of Living, 79–80. 59

34

Introduction

that this necessitated appear to have been made by boat: in 1410–11 the Wisbech sheep were first rowed to Chatteris and from there to Somersham. The Wisbech reeves were plainly expected to make personal contacts over an extensive area, and this is reflected by the number of officials from different manors who are actually named in the accounts. In 1368–9, for instance, John de Tydd recorded the names of his counterparts on seven other manors, some as far afield as Shipdham in Norfolk and Wetheringsett in Suffolk. The entrance to the Wisbech demesne itself was protected by what the accounts describe as the ‘great gates’, which were fitted with a bolt. Beyond them was the demesne courtyard, which was at least partly moated, for in 1370–1, 40 perches of ditch around it were cleaned.61 The farm buildings consisted chiefly of thatched granges (including separate granges for the different crops) and livestock houses (which by the early fifteenth century included a sheep-house, an ox-shed, a tiled cowshed made from ash and oak, a dairy,62 and a pigsty made from ash and willow); the oats grange was 120 foot in length, the wheat grange 60 foot, the pigsty 80 foot, and the cowshed 112 foot with an upper storey 32 feet long. Most of the administrative buildings were situated in the castle, though the hands-on reeve had an office on site, for in 1367–8 a ditch was made between the oats grange and the reeve’s room. With the exception of a few willows, planted to help stabilize the numerous banks and ditches, this was a treeless landscape, and much of the timber required for these buildings had to be brought in from elsewhere. Some came from other manors on the estate: oak for the cowshed from Brandon; seventeen oaks from the lord’s wood at Doddington for one of the granges; while 200 feet of oak groundsill for the dairy was selected, cut, and trimmed in the wood at Balsham. Much of the timber, though, was bought at markets and fairs, the locations of which provide another illustration of the geographical range of the Wisbech reeves. Poplar, pine planks, and hurdles for the sheepfold were bought at Lynn. Hurdles were also purchased at Ely, while considerable quantities of timber were bought from the Cambridge fairs: oak and poplar from Stourbridge Fair; oak from Reach Fair; and timber from Barnwell Fair. Timber 61 This may well be ‘the large moat at the north end of Barton Field’ that was reported in 1953: Pugh (ed.), VCH Cambridge, iv. 240. 62 The paragraph detailing the building of the dairy in 1412–13 is transcribed and translated in Sherlock, ‘Wisbech Barton’s Farm Buildings’.


35

was also transported by water: the timber bought at Barnwell Fair in 1411–12, for example, was carted to the river for 2s. and then rowed to Wisbech by John Whitmete of Upwell at a cost of 6s. 2d.63 Although the manor of Wisbech Barton extended over both sides of the river Nene, the demesne fields were all located on the north side, as Map 2.2 shows. Even so, the demesne does not appear to have been one consolidated block of land. From 1346 onwards the reeve of Wisbech in fact had to hire one rood of land in order to drive livestock to the lord’s field at Smalemedwe, suggesting that he had to traverse tenant land in order to do so. Indeed, the size of fields recorded in a 1792 rate book was invariably much larger than the acreage sown with demesne crops in these same fields in the Middle Ages:64 for instance, the demesne field Sybaldesholm was usually only sown with 10 acres, yet was measured at over 60 acres in 1792; likewise, Fenlond was generally sown with 22 acres of demesne crops, yet measured more than 235 acres in 1792.65 This suggests that the demesne land was dispersed around the manor, lying side by side with tenant land, although within each field the demesne land probably lay in a block rather than in scattered strips: in 1363–4, in fact, the 22 acres in Fenlond are described as being sown ‘in one piece’; furthermore, the division of medieval demesne land at Nymendole into three chunks of 37, 30, and 17 acres corresponds almost exactly to three contiguous plots of land in that field shown on a map accompanying the 1792 rate book.66 Most of the fields were separated from one another by ditches and lanes. Map 2.2 also shows variations in soil type across the demesne. Although basically fenland silt, soil type can be broken down 63 The manor of Wisbech had its own landing-place. The account for 1314/15 includes expenditure of 43s. 51=2 d. for mending a wooden staithe at ‘Elnredis’, and twelve years later a new staithe was made there which was 8 perches long. 64 The Wisbech accounts use measured rather than customary acres: in the 1251 survey, acreage is measured ‘by the perch’; while in 1321/2 two men were hired for nine days to measure land in the fields. The accounts may well use statute acres, though the survey used a perch of 17 feet; in 1251, therefore, the acres given are approximately 6 per cent larger than statute acres. Yet, even if a perch of this size was still in use in the 14th and early 15th centuries, this cannot explain the difference between the demesne acreage and the size of the fields in 1792. 65 Wisbech and Fenland Museum, 1949.38.54. This may well explain why some demesne fields could occasionally be sown with more land than usual, presumably when tenant holdings were temporarily in the hands of the lord. 66 At various stages in the 14th century Nymendole was either called Oldmedwe or Pygges. The three divisions of the field were sometimes distinguished as Lymedoleford, Longdrane, and Flakmore.

36

Introduction

Map 2.2. The main demesne fields at Wisbech Barton

further into light silt on the eastern flank of the manor, a strip of medium silt running north to south through the middle of the manorial fields, and medium silt–clay and heavy silt–clay further west. The fields closer to the town, on the light silt surrounding the demesne courtyard, form the original nucleus of the demesne, while those further west seem increasingly to have been brought into use between the twelfth century and the fourteenth, first as pasture


37

and then as arable.67 Indeed, after the Black Death there was a distinct westwards expansion of demesne cropping onto the heavier silt–clay, at the expense of land on the eastern fringes of the manor. To the west, beyond the fields of Wisbech Barton, lay those of Wisbech St Mary, and beyond that the wide expanse of Wisbech High Fen, an important pastoral resource in its own right, shared between the communities of the Cambridgeshire marshland.

Crops and Livestock Given the information contained in the Wisbech accounts, this book focuses chiefly on the production and management of crops and livestock. The vicissitudes of acreage, livestock numbers, and productivity might seem an inauspicious start to a book, but it is from the shifts and turns of these statistics that the mental world of medieval farmers can begin to be seen. As these data form the core of the analysis that follows, this section provides a brief overview of some of the main trends. During the 1310s about 500 acres of land were cropped each year at Wisbech, but this was quickly reduced after the agrarian crisis of 1315–22: between 1322 and 1429 the sown area on the demesne averaged 290 acres. This was divided fairly equally between winter- and spring-sown crops. The winter-sown cereals were wheat, winter barley (referred to as ‘bere’ in the accounts and throughout this book), and mixtill (a mixture of wheat and bere).68 Medieval accounts usually reveal little about the botanical diversity that probably existed within each type of crop, but the Wisbech accounts distinguish between two different forms of bere: in the early fourteenth century ‘hastibere’ was cultivated to a greater extent, but after the Black Death ‘rackbere’ overtook it.69 Even so, the winter sowing schedule was dominated by wheat and mixtill, 67 In 1251 several of the older demesne arable fields were clearly former grassland, having the suffix ‘-medwe’: Crosby (ed.), ‘Manor of Wisbech’, 124. Presumably, as arable cultivation expanded, new grassland further west was brought into use. 68 Aberth misleadingly refers to wheat at Wisbech as ‘fruit’ and bere as ‘rackmalt’ and ‘early corn’: Aberth, Criminal Churchmen, 48. 69 ‘Polbere’ also appears in the accounts, but was probably synonymous with ‘rackbere’. Bere seems to have been well suited to the fenland environment, for it is also recorded at Terrington and on several nearby Crowland Abbey manors: PRO, SC6/1132/13; Wretts-Smith, ‘Organisation of Farming’, 177–8.

Introduction

38

Table 2.1. Crop yields at Wisbech Barton, 1313–1429 (bushels, net of tithe)

Yields per acre No. of harvests Mean Maximum Minimum Coefficient of variation (%) Yield ratios No. of harvests Mean Maximum Minimum Coefficient of variation (%)

Wheat

Bere

Mixtill

Oats

Dredge

Legumes

58 10.2 20.2 5.1 35.1

53 24.2 46.1 2.0 32.5

58 16.4 25.3 6.7 28.8

59 17.3 30.2 10.4 25.3

44 20.7 38.3 7.7 37.6

55 9.4 24.7 0.0 57.5

68 4.5 9.7 2.1 40.0

62 6.5 11.5 1.4 29.8

68 5.7 8.8 2.6 28.7

66 3.9 6.4 2.2 24.4

49 5.3 9.2 1.9 36.4

60 2.9 6.2 0.0 50.7

Note: Coefficients of variation measure the degree of variation around the mean, and allow direct comparison between different datasets; the lower the coefficient, the less variation there was. Source: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8.

though the balance between these two crops was constantly changing in significant ways. The main crop at Wisbech, however, was spring-sown oats, which on average took up 43 per cent of the total cropped area. Pure spring barley was rarely planted, though dredge (a mixture of oats and spring barley) was increasingly grown after the Black Death. Leguminous crops were also sown, though the proportion of land devoted to them gradually fell during the course of the fourteenth century. Beans were the most common type of legumes in the years before the Black Death, but thereafter first a mixture of beans and peas and then peas alone were planted instead.70 Summary statistics for the yields of the different crops are given in Table 2.1, in the two forms commonly used by historians: yields per acre (the number of bushels harvested per acre sown), and yield ratios (the number of bushels harvested per bushel sown). The 70 The contraction of beans as a field crop at this time has also been noted in south-eastern counties: Mate, ‘Farming Practice’, 270–1; id., ‘Agricultural Technology’, 271.

Bishop of Ely and the Manor of Wisbech 22

Yields per acre Yield ratios

20

10 9 8

16

7

14

6

12

5

10

4

8

3

6

Yield ratio (bushels)

Yield per acre (bushels)

18

39

2

4 Black Death

2

1 0 1420

1410

1400

1390

1380

1370

1360

1350

1340

1330

1320

1310

0

Fig. 2.1. Wheat yields at Wisbech Barton, 1313–1429 (net of tithe). Source: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8.

yield of wheat, while not especially poor, was low compared to other cereals. Bere in fact returned a very high average yield of 24.2 bushels per acre and occasionally produced extraordinarily high yields by medieval standards, including 41.2 and 46.1 bushels per acre in 1333 and 1365. Mean yields of mixtill were approximately halfway between the yields of its constituent grains, though, as the coefficients of variation suggest, yields of the mixed grain were considerably more stable. Yields of oats were more stable still, which—together with a comparatively good return per acre— justifies the extent to which oats were cultivated on this and other marshland farms. The mixture of oats with spring barley also yielded well but was much less stable, though not nearly as unstable as the yields of legumes, which suffered some disastrous harvests, including three when no legumes at all were produced.71 Of more importance for the themes explored in this book is the trend in yields. As Figure 2.1 shows, yields of wheat were generally very high until the early 1330s but then collapsed in the late 1330s and 1340s, following precisely the sort of path that Postan and Titow discerned on several of the bishop of Winchester’s manors. 71

In 1397, 1405, and 1423.

40

Introduction

In the years 1314–33, 75 per cent of wheat yields at Wisbech exceeded 15 bushels per acre and 6.5 bushels per bushel sown, but between 1338 and 1349 an equally high proportion of yields were below this level. After the Black Death, much as on demesne farms elsewhere in the country, wheat yields fell even further, and were particularly low in the immediate aftermath of the plague, in the late 1360s and early 1370s, and again in the first decade of the fifteenth century. Yields of the other cereal crops followed a broadly similar path, but with one significant exception: after falling to a low point in the years immediately following the Black Death, yields of these crops, especially those of mixtill, temporarily improved in the 1360s and 1370s.72 A small number of horses were kept for pulling carts and harrows at Wisbech—an average of eight until 1392 and sixteen in the years that followed—but most of the ploughing was done by oxen, the number of which remained fairly stable at about thirty-two. Oxen were generally replaced from the market, but from time to time Wisbech kept its own dairy herd: in the years 1326–34, for example, an average of fifty-seven cows and immature cattle were recorded each Michaelmas, when the accounts were compiled, while in the period 1413–26, the herd numbered forty-five.73 Analysis of numbers of pigs and sheep is complicated by the intermittent assetstripping which took place for the Crown’s benefit when a vacancy occurred in the bishopric, but broad trends are nonetheless discernible. Numbers of pigs declined over time: the reeves aimed to keep a herd of between fifty-five and sixty-five pigs until the 1370s and between thirty and forty thereafter, although the average number recorded at Michaelmas in these periods was respectively forty-three and twenty-eight. Sheep-farming was of much more importance. Reeves aimed to maintain a flock of 500 to 600 sheep throughout the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, though the average count at Michaelmas was 430. The composition of the flock at this time of the year essentially remained the same as well. The 72 As Fig. 2.1 shows, the trend in yields per acre and yield ratios at Wisbech was virtually identical. Except where yield ratios are particularly revealing, reference to yields in the main body of the book are confined to yields per acre. 73 These dry statistics are occasionally brought to life by the mention of animal colours, although it is difficult to know whether these were commonplace or unusually distinctive: a grey stallion is recorded, and mares are noted as being red, brown, reddish-brown, black, and white; cattle appear to have been either red or black, with one young ox being described as red spotted.


41

flock was dominated by ewes (48 per cent), yearling ewes (13 per cent), and lambs (36 per cent), suggesting that Wisbech was used chiefly as a breeding ground for flocks on other manors; wool was clipped annually from the Wisbech flock, but the main focus of wool production would have been those manors to which Wisbech sent its heavier-fleeced wethers.74 Even so, compared to most other medieval sheep, the Wisbech flock produced fairly heavy fleeces, with a mean weight of 1.98 lb per fleece.75 This was doubtless due to the richness of the pasture: as Watson put it in 1827, ‘the good marsh land is particularly famous for the production of long wool, and has the effect of increasing the fleece, both in weight and length of staple, in sheep brought from other quarters’.76 As Figure 2.2 shows, the trend in fleece weights in the Wisbech accounts is very similar to the decline in wool yields found by Stephenson on the bishop of Winchester’s estate (as described in Chapter 1),77 being generally above the mean in the early fourteenth century, but often below it in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. In contrast to this pattern of declining fleece weights, the lambing rate at Wisbech showed a marked increase in the later Middle Ages, despite its already being high by medieval standards, averaging ninety-six lambs per 100 ewes.78 Although it progressively slumped between the 1320s and the 1360s, the lambing rate subsequently rose significantly; indeed, on several occasions in the early fifteenth century a few of the ewes even gave birth to twins.79 This broad overview of the management of land and livestock at medieval Wisbech forms the platform for the next section of this book. Analysis of continuities and changes in production, and investigation of the mentalities that shaped them, is broken down into four chunks, reflecting the distinct economic cycles that characterize the Middle 74 The fleece of a ewe weighed approximately 75 per cent of that of a adult male: Stephenson, ‘Wool Yields’, 373. 75 Stephenson established that the weight of medieval fleeces was usually in the 76 range 1.25–1.75 lb: ibid. 373. Watson, Historical Account, 421. 77 Stephenson, ‘Wool Yields’, 376–81. 78 The lambing rate is measured here by the number of lambs born per ewe, excluding those ewes dying before lambing. On the Crowland Abbey estate, 100 ewes produced an average of eighty-four lambs, while on the East Anglian Breckland the average was eighty-one: Bailey, Marginal Economy?, 124–5. 79 There has previously been no medieval evidence for twinning in sheep. The evidence from Wisbech is supported by specific references to ‘one ewe producing two lambs’ on the Suffolk manor of Hinderclay: Chicago UL, Bacon 473–5.

Introduction

42 3 2.5

Weight (lb)

2 1.5 1

Mean 1.98 lb

0.5

Black Death

0 1320 1330 1340 1350 1360 1370 1380 1390 1400 1410 1420 1430

Fig. 2.2. Fleece weights recorded in the Wisbech accounts, 1327–1428. Source: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8.

Ages: the period 1314–48, the ‘crisis’ of the early fourteenth century; the period 1349–75, the ‘Indian summer’ for demesne farming; the years 1376–1409, a period of depression in agriculture; and the period 1410–30, the final years of direct demesne cultivation at Wisbech. It is to be hoped that this foray into the marshland will prove more illuminating than it was for Daniel Defoe in the early eighteenth century, who ‘passed the Fenn country to Wisbich, but saw nothing that way to tempt our curiosity but deep roads, innumerable dreyns and dykes of water, all navigable, and a rich soil . . . but [there was] a base, unwholesome air, so we came back to Ely’.80

80

Defoe, Tour through the Eastern Counties, 101.

PART II

The Management of Resources at Wisbech Barton


3 From Agrarian Crisis to the Black Death The early fourteenth century has often been viewed as the demographic and economic turning point of the Middle Ages, when the expansive trends of previous centuries were ‘first halted and then put into reverse’,1 well before the arrival of the Black Death in 1348–9. According to this interpretation, population growth had outstripped agricultural resources, resulting in soil exhaustion, land scarcity, and thus an increased sensitivity to harvest failure. England was certainly densely populated in 1300 by pre-industrial standards, with a total population of probably 5 or 6 million, and the potential for disaster was cruelly exposed by the appalling weather conditions and low crop yields of the years 1315–17. The annals of London and St Paul’s record that there was ‘dire famine and mortality’ in these years,2 and studies of English rural communities suggest that this was no empty exaggeration. The longer-term demographic effects of this crisis are less clear, though, and population trends from then until 1348 may well have varied from one area of the country to another. Numbers continued to fall at Broughton in Huntingdonshire and at High Easter and Great Waltham in Essex, but on the Worcestershire manor of Halesowen and at Taunton in Somerset there are signs of demographic recovery before the Black Death.3 A falling population may have depleted the supply of agricultural labour in some areas, but the fortunes of the rural economy during this period were probably affected by other factors to a greater extent. The poor weather of 1315–17 may have been an extreme manifestation of general climatic deterioration, for there is evidence 1

Harvey, ‘Introduction’, 1. Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England: Towns, 418. Britton, Community of the Vill, 132–43; Poos, ‘Rural Population’, 521–2; Razi, Life, Marriage and Death, 27–32; Titow, ‘Some Evidence’, 218–24. 2 3

46

Management of Resources at Wisbech

both of increased storminess in the North Sea, causing coastal erosion and the inundation of low-lying areas in southern and eastern England, and of a downhill retreat in the margin of upland cultivation.4 Livestock epidemics were widespread, particularly in the late 1310s and early 1320s, resulting not only in the devastation of flocks and herds but also in a temporary increase in livestock prices; farmers who sought to replace their losses by purchasing new stock from the market were therefore doubly hit. In some regions, animal disease recurred from time to time in the following decades, perhaps breaking out most virulently in 1334–5.5 From 1336 onwards, the burden of national taxation was substantially increased as well, in order to raise funds at the beginning of the Hundred Years War. This must have had a considerable impact on the rural economy, but, as taxpayers lamented in 1341, the outlook for agricultural producers was especially bleak at this time because of falling market prices for their goods.6 Between the mid-1330s and mid-1340s, the price of both wheat and wool slumped to an average of two-thirds its mean level of the previous three decades, while the sale price of pigs fell by 30 per cent between 1300–37 and 1338–48.7 These were undoubtedly hard times for English farmers. Smallholding peasants must have suffered in particular, but the period before the Black Death was also a cheerless time for landlords. The expansive policies of the thirteenth century were coming to an end. Not only did land reclamation cease and the cropped acreage on demesnes stop rising, but many landlords even faltered in their policy of direct cultivation and reverted to leasing portions of their demesne land: the bishop of Worcester increased the leasing of his property at the expense of direct cultivation in 1299 and accelerated the process after 1311; demesne land was leased by Crowland Abbey in the 1330s and 1340s; and Westminster Abbey had its confidence in direct farming shaken at this time.8 In some areas

4

Bailey, ‘Per impetum maris’. Bailey, Marginal Economy?, 245; Mate, ‘Agrarian Economy of South-East England’, 91; Stone, ‘Medieval Farm Management’, 630. 6 A fall caused primarily by a contraction in the total amount of money in the economy, as cash flowed out of England to pay soldiers fighting on the Continent. 7 Farmer, ‘Prices and Wages’, 790–1, 804–6, 809–10. 8 Campbell, ‘Land, Labour, Livestock’, 155; Dyer, Lords and Peasants, 80–2; Page, Estates of Crowland Abbey, 114; Harvey, Westminster Abbey, 149. At Worcester piecemeal leasing may also have been prompted by the rapacious effects of successive episcopal vacancies. 5

From Agrarian Crisis to the Black Death

47

these difficulties proved transient,9 yet, as Raftis noted, when the regular series of Ramsey Abbey account rolls began in the late thirteenth century, ‘the buoyant era in agrarian profits that had brought administrative reorganisation . . . was over’.10

The Sale and Consumption of Produce As the previous chapter indicated, the agrarian crisis of 1315–22 marked a turning point in the course of direct demesne cultivation at Wisbech. The crisis prompted a sharp contraction in sown acreage, and this retrenchment is clearly reflected in the sale and consumption of crops. In the 1310s crop sales formed almost 80 per cent of total farm income, but by the early 1340s this proportion had dropped to one-third. Production of winter-sown crops—wheat, bere, and mixtill—was largely geared towards supplying the market, though the use of these crops changed considerably over time. Production was particularly commercialized in the 1310s, with over 80 per cent of wheat and 75 per cent of mixtill sold in 1314 and 1315; but thereafter wheat was regularly supplied to the bishop’s household and mixtill was increasingly used to provide bread for the manorial workforce. Indeed, on three occasions in this period, when Bishop John de Hotham (1316–37) was conducting business in the north in his role as chancellor, wheat was even shipped—at considerable expense—from Wisbech up to York.11 But production of wintersown crops did not move entirely in the direction of self-supply. Unlike wheat, a substantial quantity of mixtill was still produced for sale in the 1340s, while the production of bere had in fact become more market-oriented from the 1320s onwards: in 1314–15 less than 40 per cent of bere had been sold, but from 1322 onwards this proportion rose to approximately 80 per cent. In contrast, the spring sowing season at Wisbech was dedicated primarily to production for consumption. Considerable quantities of oats were given to manorial livestock, particularly plough beasts, but the most important function of growing oats at Wisbech was to 9 Raftis, Estates of Ramsey Abbey, 240; Britnell, ‘Production for the Market’, 382–5; Mate, ‘Agrarian Economy of South-East England’, 103–5; Campbell, English 10 Raftis, Estates of Ramsey Abbey, 217. Seigniorial Agriculture, 234. 11 In 1319–20, for example, two mariners—William Ponte and Nicholas Crane— were hired to ship 491=2 quarters of wheat and 120 quarters of oats to York at a total cost of 65s. 111=2 d.


48

supply fodder for the horses of the bishop’s retinue. Indeed, by the early 1340s, a mean of 350 quarters of oats per year was sent from Wisbech for this purpose. Large amounts of oats were sold from time to time, but this seems to have been surplus grain rather than the result of deliberate production for market. Similarly, legumes were principally grown for their nitrifying properties and as fodder for manorial livestock, but a substantial proportion of the crop was often available for sale as well. The only spring grain grown purely as a cash crop was dredge, but this was rarely sown before the Black Death. The Wisbech accounts seldom mention where or to whom grain was sold in this period, but some details of marketing arrangements can be pieced together. Many bulk sales were made, presumably to merchants trading either in Lynn or on the fenland waterways. For example, in 1314–15 sales included lots of approximately 80, 60, and 40 quarters of wheat, 80 and 40 quarters of mixtill, and 99 and 40 quarters of oats. Some of these larger transactions may have taken place at the manorial staithe on the banks of the river Nene; this may well have been one of the places where Elizabeth de Burgh’s avener, John Gough, bought a large quantity of oats in 1338 for shipping down to her Cambridgeshire residence at Anglesey. According to her household accounts, Gough bought 891=4 quarters of oats at Wisbech on 29 September 1338 for 16d. per quarter; in the Wisbech Barton account for 1337/8, nearly 49 quarters of oats were sold super compotum (i.e. in late September 1338), also at 16d. per quarter.12 Not all corn was sold in large lots, however, as the pattern of mixtill sales reveals. In 1314, and in most years between 1327 and 1344, the average lot size of mixtill sold per year was high, usually between 35 and 75 quarters. But in the years 1315–22 and 1347–8 several smaller parcels were sold, even though the total amount marketed remained relatively stable. In the spring of 1348, for example, three parcels of mixtill totalling 11 bushels were sold at Wisbech market and four parcels, each of 10 quarters, were sold—unusually—to named buyers: Thomas Baton, Adam Tot, William Kyng, and Adam Palmer. These small, presumably local, transactions occurred at times of generally poor harvests: farm managers on the Wisbech demesne, it seems, were happy to take advantage of local dearth, when high prices close at hand 12

I am grateful to Jennifer Ward for this information.


49

outweighed the potential gains to be made from seeking sales on a wider stage. In general, manorial accounts rarely specify the timing of crop sales during the course of the agricultural year. During the 1330s and 1340s, however, the Wisbech accounts consistently provide information of this nature, and Table 3.1 shows the monthly distribution of sales of winter-sown crops in this period. The majority of sales took place between January and July, with very little market activity during the busy harvest season, which began on 1 August. More significantly in terms of marketing strategies, the precise timing of these transactions was staggered according to the value of the different grains, beginning with the cheapest: bere was generally sold first (between January and March), mixtill second (between March and May), and wheat last (between May and July). The valuable wheat crop, then, was mainly held back until market prices would often have been at their highest, in the so-called ‘hungry gap’ immediately preceding the next harvest. However, some wheat was occasionally sold very early in the accounting year and probably reflects attempts to garner reliable market information in advance of sowing the following year’s winter crops, which usually took place in November or December. Indeed, it is notable that sales of

Table 3.1. Timing of sales of winter-sown crops at Wisbech Barton, 1329–1348 Accounting year 1329/30 1331/2 1332/3 1333/4 1337/8 1338/9 1340/1 1341/2 1342/3 1343/4 1346/7 1347/8

Oct.

Nov.

w

Dec.

Feb.

Mar.

Apr.

May

June

July

m w, b

m w, b, m b b, m

b, m m b, m m b, m m m m

m m m w, m m

m w w, m m

m w w w w, m

w w w w

m w, m w, m w, m

m w, m w, m w

w w, m w

m

w

m

b, m

b, m

b, m b b m

m b, m m w w, m

Jan.

b m

b

b, m m m

Aug.

Sept.

w m m m w, m m

Note: w ¼ wheat, b ¼ bere, m ¼ mixtill or maslin. The sequence of years is not always consecutive because of missing account rolls. Source: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8.

w, m

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mixtill—which progressively became a more commercialized crop than wheat—not only extended increasingly into June, and occasionally later, but also became more and more common between October and December. Cropping strategies will be considered in more detail below, but information on the timing of crop sales already suggests that market prices were influential in this respect. As the previous chapter indicated, sheep-farming was the main pastoral enterprise at Wisbech. In contrast to the arable sector, sheep husbandry accounted for an increasing proportion of demesne income in the decades before the Black Death, reaching almost 20 per cent by the early 1340s. These figures, though, mask other developments. A large number of fleeces were sold at Wisbech in the 1310s and 1320s, but from 1330 onwards the manorial wool clip was usually shipped down to Ely, presumably to facilitate bulk sales. Indeed, during the 1330s and 1340s fleeces were also sent to Ely—via Wisbech—from the marshland manor of Beaudesert. This seems to have been part of a wider reorganization of sheep-farming on the bishop of Ely’s manors in this region, as different farms increasingly assumed more specialized roles. Prior to the Black Death, especially in the period 1330–44, well over 1,000 immature sheep were transferred from Wisbech to Beaudesert; as the majority of these sheep were young wethers, and would thus develop a heavy fleece, it would suggest that Beaudesert had been singled out for wool production whereas Wisbech was reserved chiefly for breeding.13 Wool and lambs were certainly the major products of sheep-farming, but they were not the only ones. In particular, the Wisbech ewes were regularly leased for milking in this period; with such a large flock, this generated considerable revenue, averaging nearly 59s. a year in the 1330s and almost 89s. a year in the early 1340s. The contribution of cattle-farming to demesne income was invariably modest, usually about 2 per cent, though this increased to 7–8 per cent during the late 1320s and early 1330s when farm managers briefly experimented with dairy herding. Between twenty and forty cows were kept at this time, generating profit through the leasing of lactage but also providing a ready supply of replacement 13 Some of the monastic estates in this region also organized their sheep flocks on an inter-manorial basis at this time. The Crowland Abbey flock was managed centrally by 1276, and the Peterborough Abbey one by 1307: Page, Estates of Crowland Abbey, 117; Biddick, Other Economy, 100–6.


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oxen, which were generally preferred to horses as plough beasts and were the only type of cattle regularly herded throughout this period. Income was boosted by the sale of cows and oxen at the end of their working lives, or—in the case of cows—if they proved sterile, though cattle were occasionally sent out from Wisbech to restock another demesne or for consumption by the lord’s household. Wisbech in fact played more than just a minor role in fulfilling the bishop of Ely’s desire for fresh meat. This was most clearly manifest in the supplying of pigs for the lord’s larder. In the accounts for this period a total of nearly 500 mainly adult castrates were driven from Wisbech to various episcopal residences, especially Ely, Doddington, and Downham; in contrast, only twentyfour Wisbech pigs were ever sold. Furthermore, between 1339 and 1344 Wisbech acted as a collecting point for livestock sent from some of the bishop’s marshland manors, bound for consumption by the lord’s household. On 20 September 1339, for example, the reeve at Wisbech received four oxen from Terrington, two oxen each from Walpole and Walton, and eight heifers from Beaudesert, which, together with two cows and three oxen from the Wisbech demesne, were sent to the bishop’s palace at Somersham on 21 September to stock the larder there. Notably, the transferrals of livestock in the years 1339–44 all took place between September and November, and, where it is recorded, a high proportion of livestock sales likewise, both of which suggest an autumn rationalization of livestock.

Cereal-Cropping Strategies The proportion of land devoted to each crop changed considerably during the course of the early fourteenth century, the main adjustments being made to winter cropping. The proportion of sown land devoted to wheat fell from about 25 per cent in 1314 and 1315 to just over 10 per cent during the 1330s and early 1340s, though this recovered slightly in the years immediately preceding the Black Death. In compensation, the proportion of mixtill increased from approximately 17 per cent at the start of the period to an average of almost 30 per cent from the mid-1330s onwards, occasionally occupying over one-third of the total cropped area at that time. The sowing of bere, meanwhile, remained comparatively stable during

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these years at 8–10 per cent of the total sown area, although a higher than average proportion of land was sown with bere in the late 1320s and early 1330s, and rather less in the late 1340s. Although fairly stable, the proportion of cropped acreage occupied by oats increased slightly as the period progressed, rising to over 50 per cent on several occasions in the early 1330s and 1340s.14 During the early part of this period, when wheat was grown primarily as a cash crop, fluctuating market prices seem to have played an important part in determining the proportion of sown acreage devoted to that crop: in 1314 the mean selling price of wheat was 4.9s. per quarter and wheat occupied 24.7 per cent of cropped acreage; by 1315 the price per quarter of wheat had risen to 6.9s., resulting in an increase in the proportion of wheat sown (26.6 per cent); in 1320 wheat prices had reverted to 5s. per quarter and the reeve allotted just 16.2 per cent of arable acreage to the crop. However, by 1322 the selling price of wheat had doubled to 10s. per quarter and the crop again assumed greater prominence, occupying 23.9 per cent of the sown area; the price of wheat then fell again, and by 1327 it stood at just 3.7s. per quarter, at which time wheat occupied only 12.9 per cent of cropped acreage. This close relationship between wheat prices and the proportion of sown acreage devoted to wheat was also apparent in the years 1347–8, but between 1330 and 1344 price responsiveness in wheat-sowing was, by contrast, minimal: during these years, wheat acreage was kept at 30–373=4 acres irrespective of slight fluctuations in price.15 It is surely not coincidental that these intervening years of comparative inflexibility came at a time when wheat prices were generally low and consumption rather than sale had become the main priority in wheat production at Wisbech. The management of mixtill and bere certainly suggests that this was a deliberate policy, for the shift away from wheat towards mixtill and—during the late 1320s and early 1330s—bere can largely be attributed to an increase in the price of these two grains relative to that of wheat. Between 1314 and 1320 mixtill fetched on average 68 per cent of the selling price of wheat, but in the period 1322–32 14 Dredge was rarely sown in this period, and even when it was grown—in 1339 and 1341—it was only in parcels of fewer than 10 acres. 15 For example, between 1332 and 1334 a constant 30 acres were sown with wheat even though the selling price reached 8.1s. per quarter in 1332 and fell to 4.7s. per quarter in 1334.


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this had increased to 86 per cent; likewise, between 1314 and 1322 bere fetched only 54 per cent of the price of wheat, but 74 per cent in the period 1327–32. Such levels were not consistently maintained throughout the 1330s and 1340s, but nevertheless these grains still fetched a relatively high price during these decades. As we shall see, since mixtill usually produced better yields than wheat, and bere was even higher-yielding still, these price developments meant that the gross financial return per acre sown with mixtill and bere in this period was frequently comparable to, if not better than, that attained by wheat. In making decisions about the acreage of winter-sown cash crops, reeves at Wisbech would have been well aware that they were attempting to anticipate the level of market prices at the time that the grain would be sold, eleven to twenty-two months later. This, of course, was extremely difficult, since future prices would be affected by a number of unpredictable factors, not least the quality of the harvest. In making their decisions, the reeves relied on the best and most up-to-date price information they could obtain. Yet they were clearly also aware that land allocation should not rely simply on absolute movements in market prices, not just because the price of grain at the time of sowing will seldom be a good guide to price at the time of sale, but also because what mattered most when more than one cash crop was grown was relative prices. As well as being a more astute means of formulating a cropping plan, trends in the relative value of different cash crops are also easier to read from current and past price information. The relative rise in value of mixtill and bere during this period of intense population pressure on agricultural resources probably reflects an increased demand for bread grains that were cheaper than wheat, as more and more consumers ‘traded down’ in the quality of their staple foodstuff. Yet this raises an interesting question of timing: after all, this rise in relative prices came some time after, rather than during, the famine years of 1315–17. Nor was Wisbech alone in seeing the gap between the price of wheat and that of other grains close during this period: for example, on the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds demesne of Hinderclay in Suffolk, the price of barley relative to wheat rose from 61 per cent in 1316–18 to peaks of 78 per cent in 1319–20, and 96 per cent in 1327 and 1332–3.16 In 16

Chicago UL, Bacon 446–9, 455, 459–60.

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fact, this trend probably highlights the combined and cumulative impact of poor harvests and livestock murrain on the income of local, small-scale producers. Historians are understandably mesmerized by the disastrous events of 1315–17, but the late 1310s and early 1320s were also devastating for farmers. Not only at the time, but also in the years that followed as they sought to rebuild their herds and flocks; any recurrence of murrain or poor yields during the 1320s and early 1330s may well have had a disproportionately severe effect. Hence not only the general rise in relative prices that is so clearly apparent at Wisbech but also the gradually higher peaks revealed by the more complete series of records for Hinderclay. Yet despite the clear relationship between relative prices and relative acreage in the sowing of mixtill and bere at Wisbech, the impact of movements in the absolute price of grain should not be, and was not, dismissed out of hand. After all, relative area is meaningless in real terms until the acreage of one crop is fixed. When wheat was the main cash crop in the 1310s and 1320s it made sense to fix the wheat acreage with reference to movements in its absolute price and then decide upon the relative acreage of mixtill and bere.17 But as mixtill began to be sown more widely, reference was also made to movements in the absolute price of this crop. For instance, the rise in the proportion of acreage under mixtill between 1332 and 1333 came after a high selling price of 7.5s. per quarter in 1332, but when the price per quarter of mixtill dropped to 5s. in 1333, the proportion of land sown with the crop in 1334 also fell. Indeed, the hunt for the best price information may well explain why some mixtill was increasingly sold at about the time that winter crops were sown, as we saw earlier. Certainly, the sowing of mixtill in the late 1330s and 1340s was influenced more and more by current prices.18 The suitability of mixtill as a cheaper bread grain is likely to have played an important part in its rise to dominance in the winter sowing season, but there were perhaps other factors at work here too. It has been argued that crop mixtures were used in medieval agriculture as smother crops, with competition between the two different species helping to reduce weed growth.19 At Wisbech 17

See also Stone, ‘Medieval Farm Management’, 619–22. The only exception was in 1342, when a slight increase in the price of mixtill was accompanied by a fall in the proportion of mixtill sown. This can be attributed to a sharp, though temporary, fall in the value of mixtill relative to wheat. 19 Pretty, ‘Sustainable Agriculture’, 5. 18


55

a major consideration may also have been the relative stability of mixtill yields in comparison with those of its constituent grains, wheat and bere. With coefficients of variation of 28.2 per cent and 28.5 per cent respectively, yields per acre of both wheat and bere in this period were clearly prone to more variation than those of mixtill, which had a coefficient of just 14.1 per cent.20 In practice, the greater stability of mixtill yields can be illustrated by examples of years in which the yields of wheat and bere were significantly different, one low and the other high, while those of mixtill remained at a consistently good level. For instance, in 1314 wheat yielded well above average at 16.3 bushels per acre, but the return for bere was low at 21.4 bushels per acre; mixtill yielded slightly above average at 20.8 bushels per acre. In 1346 the per acre yield of wheat was poor at 11.4 bushels, while that for bere was particularly high at 31 bushels; once again, mixtill yielded slightly above average at 21 bushels per acre. Reeves may well have perceived yield stability as a significant advantage in a cash crop, and plausibly promoted mixtill in the cropping schedule as a result. So while the market was of great significance in determining cropping decisions at Wisbech in this period, it was by no means the only influence. This diversity of stimuli is most vividly illustrated by the case of oats. As oats was sown mainly for the purpose of consumption, it is not surprising that oats acreage was more responsive to the requirements of manor and estate than to market prices. For example, a relatively low consumption of oats in 1338 (240 quarters) was matched by a sown acreage that year of 114 acres, whereas higher consumption in 1343 (543 quarters) and 1344 (483 quarters) encouraged the sowing of more oats, respectively 152 and 138 acres. But even so, over the period as a whole, the correlation between patterns of oats consumption and fluctuations in acreage is weak, for the simple reason that environmental conditions also need to be taken into account. It has already been noted that the general prominence of oats at Wisbech was appropriate to the fenland environment; the same reasoning can be applied to year-to-year variations in the cultivation of oats. With medieval farmers all too aware that the inundation of land could severely reduce arable profits, it appears that some attempt was made to maximize income from 20

The comparative stability of mixtill yields at Wisbech contrasts with Pretty’s findings on the performance of crop mixtures: ibid. 5–6.

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spring crops—particularly oats—during wet years. The clearest example of this was in 1338–9, when rain caused flooding at Gilberdesdole field, which had been planted with winter-sown bere; come the spring, not only was part of this field then oversown with dredge, but 152 acres of oats and 24 acres of legumes were also sown. Rather than the roughly equal balance that was usually maintained between winter- and spring-sown crops, the latter formed nearly 60 per cent of sown acreage in this year. Similar links can be made in other years. The account for 1331/2 noted that some of the land required further protection from flooding; 144 acres of oats were sown in that year and spring crops comprised 55 per cent of the cropped area. It was reportedly rainy during the winter sowing season of 1341–2; the following spring, 157 acres of oats were sown, which on its own made up 53 per cent of total sown acreage. Likewise, the account for 1345/6 noted that it was ‘a rainy time this year’; 132 acres of oats were sown that year and spring crops formed 59 per cent of the cropped area. The implementation of this strategy sometimes helps to account for the sporadic sale pattern of oats: for example, huge surpluses of oats were sold in 1332 and 1339, but barely any at all in other years during the 1330s. It seems reasonable to suggest, then, that adjustments to the acreage sown with different crops at Wisbech in this period were not determined by customary routine or by consultation with local astrologers, but were instead the result of deliberate decisions by the reeves. But while it is possible to demonstrate the rational basis of these decisions, judging the effectiveness of them is more difficult. Not only were the aims of production complex and variable, but even the best-laid plans might be disrupted by the unpredictability of the weather. Nevertheless, one measure of success for the more commercialized crops is to compare changes in sown acreage with fluctuations in gross value per acre. The gross return per acre for each crop is calculated by multiplying crop yields per acre (net of tithe and seed) with the price that the crop fetched at market; Table 3.2 shows crop returns per acre at Wisbech for every year in which they can be calculated in the period before the Black Death. The drop in the mean value of sown arable land from 85–95d. per acre in 1314 and the early 1330s to 44–51d. per acre in the late 1330s and early 1340s provides a good indication of the difficulties faced by farmers in this period. But of more interest in this context are the changes in the returns on winter-sown crops. While wheat began and ended the


57

Table 3.2. Gross crop returns per acre at Wisbech Barton, 1314–1348 (pence) Year

Wheat

Bere

Mixtill

Oats

Dredge

Legumes

Mean

1314 1332 1333 1338 1341 1342 1343 1346 1347 1348

144 134 119 56 62 90 101 77 48 133

106 76 166 56 46 58 121 121 — 84

134 114 124 58 58 93 99 107 123 88

60 75 43 44 30 51 48 57 37

— — — — 29 — — — — —

28 53 18 31 39 — — 78 59 19

95 89 85 51 44 66 74 77 — 66

Mean

96

93

100

49

29

41

72

a

Note: The quantity of grain produced is measured net of tithe and seed. These are the only years in this period for which gross returns per acre can be calculated. a No data. Source: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8.

period as the most valuable crop, it was often the case in the 1330s and 1340s that bere or mixtill achieved higher returns per acre. Indeed, mixtill was more valuable per acre than wheat in five out of seven years between 1333 and 1347, and in the other two years the margin of difference between the two crops was negligible. It is also noteworthy that the value per acre of mixtill was subject to considerably less variation than that of wheat or bere, suggesting that the farm concentrated on the most financially reliable, as well as generally the most lucrative, grain during this period.21 The decision to devote a greater proportion of sown acreage to mixtill at the expense of wheat at this time is clearly justified by these figures. The effectiveness of cropping strategies can also be analysed on a year-to-year basis using these data. As we have seen, wheat cultivation at Wisbech during the 1330s and 1340s was unresponsive to fluctuations in market price, and this is further emphasized by the way in which wheat-cropping failed to predict changes in revenue. By contrast, it appears that the sowing strategy for mixtill at that 21

The coefficients of variation are 36.5 per cent for wheat and 42.4 per cent for bere, but only 26.5 per cent for mixtill.

58


time was extremely effective. For example, in 1332, 62 acres were sown with mixtill, the gross value of which was 114d. per acre; in the following year the area under that crop was increased to 89 acres and the return rose to 124d. per acre. Notably, this was also accompanied by a drop in the return on wheat, which fell to a level below that of mixtill. Likewise, in 1346 there were 50 acres under mixtill, but this rose to 106 acres in 1347, an expansion vindicated by an increase in gross returns from 107d. to 123d. per acre (and once again a drop in the per acre value of wheat). In the following year, mixtill acreage was reduced to 95 acres, and this was matched by a fall in the value of that crop to 88d. per acre (and an increase in the return on wheat). In fact, only once—in 1342—was the sowing strategy for mixtill at odds with the changing value of the crop.22 It would appear, though, that this was the exception rather than the rule.

Crop Rotation and Field Management Reeves at Wisbech began to record the acreage of crops sown in individual fields in 1332. It is not clear exactly what prompted this development, though the poor harvest of 1331 and possibly a longerterm plan to wrest administrative power from the hired bailiff may both have contributed to the reeve’s greater watchfulness.23 Either way, the reeve was aided by a recent land survey: in 1322 two men were hired for nine days ‘to measure land in the fields’. Twelve field schedules survive for the period 1332–48; although they occasionally omit field names for some of the less widely sown crops, the frequently consecutive survival of these field schedules allows a detailed reconstruction of cropping patterns at Wisbech.24 22 It seems that farm managers expected bere to produce a greater return than mixtill in that year, for the area under bere increased whereas the acreage under mixtill was reduced. While the value of bere did in fact rise, the decision ultimately proved unprofitable as the per acre return on mixtill was considerably greater than that on bere. 23 Yields per acre cannot be calculated for the 1331 harvest, but yields per seed of wheat (at 4.4 bushels) and mixtill (at 5.7 bushels) were respectively 46 and 23 per cent lower in that year than the average yield of these crops in the four other recorded harvests in the period 1326–33. The costly services of a hired bailiff were dispensed with after 1334. 24 No field names were recorded in this period for maslin (1333–4, 1341–2, 1348), hastibere (1334, 1342), rackbere (1341), legumes (1333–4, 1341–2), and dredge (1339, 1341). In most cases, however, it is possible to pinpoint where these crops were probably sown.


59

On two fields—Couleylond and Fenditchcroft—reeves employed a form of convertible husbandry, the fields being sown with oats for several years in succession and then fallowed for a similar length of time. However, most fields were sown in a three-course rotation of winter crop, spring crop, fallow. This was strictly followed in one or two cases, but on the majority of fields such regularity of rotation was not sustained; after all, a degree of flexibility in field management must have been crucial to the successful implementation of the cropping strategies described in the last section. The recording of field names in 1332 seems to have prompted an immediate reorganization of sowing patterns on several fields, though elsewhere on the farm reeves continued to make adjustments to sowing patterns throughout this period. At Podilcroft, for instance, an extra fallow year was inserted in 1334, but six years later the fallow phase seems to have been omitted altogether. Similarly, the two sections of Oldmedwe were both basically cultivated on a three-course rotation, but on one a fallow year replaced a spring crop in 1338, while on the other an extra spring crop was inserted in place of fallow in 1344. Some fields were even able to sustain a series of extra wintersown crops, as at Cotecroft on three occasions and Fenlond on two. Indeed, examining the cropping location of the major cereals at three-year intervals can reveal important aspects of field management. Table 3.3 lists the fields in which winter-sown crops were Table 3.3. Field management of winter-sown crops at Wisbech Barton, 1337, 1340, 1343 (acres) Crop

1337

1340

253=4 Smalemedwe 12 Gretemedwe Bere 19 Fourscoreacres (2) (þ7 there?) Mixtill 28 Adgerestoncroft 33 Fourscoreacres (1) 28 Fourscoreacres (1) 30 Adgerestoncroft 23 Lythesmedwe 26 Lythesmedwe 23 Podilcroft (þ7 Fourscoreacres (2)?) 4 Gilberdesdole

Wheat

26 Smalemedwe 11 Gretemedwe 23 Fenlond

1343 25 10 20 12 33 26 26

Smalemedwe Adgerestoncroft Adgerestoncroft Gretemedwe Fourscoreacres (1) Lythesmedwe Sybaldesholm

Note: The numerals in parentheses after Fourscoreacres in this table, and after certain other fields hereafter, indicate that these fields were subdivided; the numerals refer to the different parts of each field. Source: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8.

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planted in the years 1337, 1340, and 1343. The table firstly shows that some fields were sown with the same crop in each year: for example, Smalemedwe was clearly designated as a wheat field, while Fourscoreacres (1) and Lythesmedwe were consistently set aside for mixtill. This policy was adopted throughout the period 1332–48, and the same principle clearly operated at other stages in the rotation as well. So for each of the major crops there was a core set of fields on which they were usually sown. Secondly, however, Table 3.3 illustrates how reeves were also able to alter the use of some fields and hence adjust the geography of winter-sown cereals. Gretemedwe was sown with wheat in 1337 and 1340, but with bere in 1343. Adgerestoncroft was sown with mixtill in 1337 and 1340, but in 1343 two-thirds of it was sown with bere and the remainder with wheat. To compensate for the loss of Adgerestoncroft, 26 acres of mixtill was sown on Sybaldesholm in 1343, the second winter crop in a row on that field. These seemingly careful and deliberate adjustments to the winter cropping schedule certainly support the idea that the acreage under different crops was dictated by the sort of cropping strategies outlined above rather than simply by traditional field use. Between 1340 and 1343 reeves reduced the area under wheat and mixtill, and increased the acreage of bere: some reorganization of cropping was therefore necessary in order to make full use of the available land. These two aspects of field management—the discrete cropping of cereals and annual adjustments to cropping schedules—raise the important, if rarely addressed, question of the extent to which different fields on the same farm varied significantly in fertility. The sustainability of crop rotations on different fields together with variations in soil quality may well have resulted in crop yields that differed from one area of the farm to another. This is generally difficult to prove from manorial accounts, since the record of grain harvested usually refers to the crop as a whole rather than to the individual parcels in which it was sown. However, there are two ways of exploring local yield variation at Wisbech. First, the two forms of bere—hastibere and rackbere—were occasionally both sown in the same year, but entered separately in the accounts. Yields of these two crops, which were sown at identical rates, were usually very similar.25 25

In 1341, for example, hastibere yielded 19 bushels per acre and rackbere 19.9, while in 1343 these crops yielded 31 and 30.9 bushels per acre respectively.


61

But in 1342, while rackbere yielded 27.5 bushels per acre, hastibere yielded just 13.9 bushels. Both were probably sown in Cotecroft,26 which suggests that yields could differ substantially even in the same field. Secondly, a more sustained impression of the relative performance of certain fields can be gained by comparing yields per acre of crops sown entirely on a single field with the average performance of all cereals in that year. For example, in the years when bere was sown entirely on Fourscoreacres (2), the index of bere yields fell substantially below the mean of the indexed yields for all cereals; by contrast, the yield of bere sown entirely on Nymendole was comparatively high.27 Notably, the results for Cotecroft also suggest that this was a field of varying quality. Correlating the six results for this field from the period 1332–72 with the sown acreage of the relevant crops produces a highly significant coefficient of0.976: in other words, the more widely a crop was sown at Cotecroft, the less well it yielded.28 As local husbandmen, the Wisbech reeves must have been well aware of such differences, and presumably made use of this knowledge in deciding what was to be sown where. Trends in crop yields may well have been affected as a result; as we shall see, this certainly seems to have been the case in the years following the Black Death.

Agrarian Techniques and the Maintenance of Soil Fertility Other factors probably had a more significant influence on trends in crop yields prior to this. For Postan and Titow, of course, this period was characterized by the spectre of soil exhaustion stalking 26 The rackbere certainly was, and adding the 23 acres of hastibere (for which no field was named) to the 12 acres of rackbere, plus the 5 acres of wheat that were also sown at Cotecroft in 1342, gives a total of 40 acres, which was the acreage sown at Cotecroft in 1339, 1343, 1346, and 1348. 27 A cereal yield index for any one year is compiled by averaging the yield indices (that year’s yield as a percentage of the mean yield for that crop) of each of the cereals. Because of the introduction of dredge after the Black Death, an index for the period 1314–51 (using the yields of wheat, bere, mixtill, and oats) has been calculated separately from one for 1353–1423. In these examples, subtracting the cereal yield index from the bere yield index gives results for Fourscoreacres (2) of 12 and 17, and for Nymendole of þ25. 28 Correlation analysis measures the degree of association between two variables. The resulting coefficient lies between þ1 and 1: results close to þ1 show a strong positive correlation; results close to 1 a strong negative correlation; and a coefficient of zero indicates no correlation at all.

62


through the English countryside. It has recently been suggested that a steady depletion of phosphorous rather than a chronic lack of soil nitrogen was to blame for this, but the main thrust of the argument nevertheless remains broadly the same: this was an era of mounting ecological crisis and, with the techniques and resources available to them, medieval farmers could do little about it. Arable yields certainly fell on many farms in the early fourteenth century. At Wisbech yields per acre of wheat dropped by 25 per cent between 1314–33 and 1338–47, and even those of the more stable mixtill crop fell by 14 per cent over the same period. However, the yields of these crops do not appear to have been driven down by ecological calamity; instead, declining productivity seems to have been the result of a series of deliberate changes to the way in which the land was farmed: as grain prices fell during the 1330s and 1340s, farm officials gradually curtailed their use of certain techniques, particularly in the cultivation of the more market-oriented crops. The sowing of legumes has been identified as an important means of maintaining levels of soil nitrogen in medieval arable cultivation.29 Compared to many other demesne farms, the proportion of sown acreage devoted to legumes at Wisbech was relatively small; even at its height, legume cultivation here never exceeded 10 per cent of sown acreage,30 and this proportion declined during the 1330s and early 1340s, to the extent that no legumes at all were sown for several years, before recovering in the late 1340s. Yet this does not mean that reeves at Wisbech were unaware of the contribution that legumes could make to soil nutrition. While there are no direct references in the accounts to legumes being sown specifically for this purpose, as there are for the bishop of Winchester’s demesne of Rimpton in Somerset,31 the Wisbech evidence makes it clear that soil enrichment was the primary aim. For example, legumes were judiciously sown immediately prior to cash crops; the yield of beans and peas was often so low that monetary returns per acre were negligible; and more was invested in the sowing of 29 See e.g. Shiel, ‘Improving Soil Productivity’, 54–7, and Campbell, ‘Diffusion of Vetches’, 195–8. 30 In comparison, legumes occupied 16 per cent of sown acreage at Hinderclay (Suffolk) in this period, 20 per cent at Martham (Norfolk) in the period 1261–1340, and between 20 and 30 per cent on demesnes in coastal Sussex throughout the Middle Ages: Stone, ‘Medieval Farm Management’, 623; Campbell, ‘Agricultural Progress’, 33; Brandon, ‘Demesne Arable Farming’, 123. 31 Thornton, ‘Determinants of Land Productivity’, 196.


63

nitrifying legumes than in any other crop.32 In particular, reeves appear to have followed a strategy for deciding how much land to devote to legumes from year to year: for much of this period, this was not based on the price of legumes or the amount of beans and peas that were consumed but on the market price for wheat. In essence, higher wheat prices encouraged increased investment in legume cultivation and vice versa. For example, when the price of wheat increased from 4.9s. in 1314 to 6.9s. in 1315, the proportion of legumes sown increased from 7.8 to 8 per cent, before dropping to 4.7 per cent in 1320 when wheat prices fell back to 5s. By 1322 wheat prices had risen to 10s. and legumes formed 8.6 per cent of the sown area, though when wheat prices fell to 3.7s. in 1327, the proportion of legumes was reduced to 6.8 per cent. This relationship can be traced through much of the rest of the period, and so it is no surprise—since wheat acreage was largely determined by the price of wheat as well—that there is an extremely strong correlation between the sown acreage of wheat and legumes.33 Consequently, the reduction in the proportion of land devoted to legumes in the 1330s and 1340s was first and foremost a deliberate response to the poor market price for grain at that time.34 With legumes occupying an average of just 5.2 per cent of the sown acreage in this period, it might be thought that changes in legume cultivation were incidental to the distinct trends in crop yields in this period. However, two further aspects of legume cultivation suggest that this was not necessarily the case. First, legumes were not equally divided between the different fields; instead, certain fields were targeted for legume cultivation for the benefit of particular crops. As a result, simple calculations of the mean percentage of cropped land devoted to legumes can mask a wide range of experiences. For instance, in the twelve years for which field 32 Multiplying the mean seeding rate by the average market price reveals that the cost of sowing legumes was 21.1d. per acre, while the per acre costs of sowing the other crops were: mixtill 19.1d.; bere 18.7d., wheat 18.5d., and oats 14.5d. 33 For the twenty years for which data is available in this period there is a Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.783, which is significant at a 0.1 per cent level of probability; in other words, there is only a 0.1 per cent chance that these variables are not associated. 34 Trends in wheat prices cannot fully explain the complete absence of legumes in the years 1342–4, though as massive quantities of oats were sent from Wisbech to other manors on the Ely estates in these years, it may simply have been necessary to turn the whole of the spring sowing season over to oats in order to meet this extraordinary demand.

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names were recorded in the period 1332–48, legumes made up 19 per cent of sown acreage at Fenlond, 16 per cent at Oldmedwe (2), and 12 per cent at Podilcroft, whereas many other fields held no legumes at all. From another perspective, the extent to which cereal crops received benefit from the sowing of legumes often bore little relation to the average area under legumes. For example, 22 acres of legumes were sown at Fenlond in 1348 followed in 1349 by 21 acres of wheat; as the wheat crop of 1349 occupied a total of 44 acres, fully 48 per cent of that crop derived benefit from the fixation of nitrogen in the soil. Secondly, assessing the impact of legume cultivation on crop yields must also take account of changes in crop rotations, for while the overall area under beans and peas may have been determined by the price of wheat, it was not always wheat that received the benefit. The pattern in fact seems to reflect trends in the marketing and sowing of the two main winter-sown crops. Wheat was certainly the beneficiary on the eve of the Black Death, corresponding to the slight resurgence in the cultivation of wheat as a cash crop at that time, and it was probably also sown after crops of legumes in the 1310s and 1320s. But during the 1330s and 1340s, when wheat was no longer the main commercial crop, it was nearly always mixtill that followed legumes in the cropping sequence. The efficacy of legume cultivation is usually difficult to prove empirically.35 However, changes in the use of legumes appear to have had a significant impact on yields at Wisbech. Table 3.4 shows mean yield ratios for wheat and mixtill in three periods during the early fourteenth century, corresponding to variations in the use of legumes: period I runs from 1313 to 1332, when it seems likely that wheat derived most benefit from the cultivation of legumes; period II covers the years 1333–8 and 1346–8, when mixtill was sown directly after crops of beans; and period III focuses on the harvests of 1342 and 1343, when neither wheat nor mixtill would have received any boost of this kind.36 Notably, reflecting the different targeting of legumes, wheat yields fell by 13 per cent between period I and period II, whereas yields of mixtill rose by 5 per cent. 35

Indeed, one historian has questioned whether legume cultivation in later centuries had any effect on crop yields at all: Allen, Enclosure and the Yeoman, 137–8, 205–6. 36 Yields per seed have been used in this analysis since seven harvests can be measured using this method for the period 1313–32, but only three in terms of yields per acre.


65

Table 3.4. The impact of legume cultivation on yields per seed of wheat and mixtill at Wisbech Barton, 1313–1348 Period

I (1313–32) II (1333–8, 1346–8) III (1342–3)

No. of harvests

Wheat

Mixtill

Yield

% change

Yield

7 5

6.86 5.99

13

6.67 7.01

þ5

103 85

2

6.12

þ2

6.27

11

98

% change

Wheat yield as % of mixtill yield

Note: Italicized yields correspond to periods when crops benefited from the cultivation of legumes. Source: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8.

Moreover, in period III, when legumes were withdrawn from the rotation altogether, mixtill yields were 11 per cent lower than they had been in period II, whereas wheat yields, having derived no benefit from legume cultivation in either of these periods, remained comparatively stable. Yet, suggestive though these results are, it is difficult to isolate any one factor that changed arable yields over time, not least because of the distorting effect of the weather. It is reassuring, therefore, that a comparison of the relative yields of these crops in each period points to the same conclusion. In period III, when wheat and mixtill were on a par in terms of legume cultivation, the yields of the two crops were virtually identical; but wheat yields pulled ahead in period I, and dropped behind in period II. These results suggest that changes in legume cultivation may well have played a part in the decline in wheat yields during the 1330s and 1340s, and also help to explain why the output of mixtill was less severely affected at this time. Yet, the clear drop in mixtill yields per seed between periods I and III in Table 3.4, and the overall decline in yields per acre of that crop, indicate that trends in productivity must have been determined by other factors as well. One of the most important methods of maintaining soil fertility in medieval arable husbandry was the application of animal manure to cultivated land, whether through the grazing of livestock on fallow fields and stubble or through the gathering, carting, and hand-spreading of farmyard muck. This, of course, explains why historians seeking to substantiate claims of soil exhaustion have

66


drawn attention to evidence of deteriorating ratios of livestock to arable in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Compared to national figures for demesne agriculture, livestock numbers at Wisbech were fairly high, but because the sown area here was relatively large, the stocking density at Wisbech was in fact considerably below average, and lower even than that prevailing in a predominantly arable county such as Norfolk.37 Even so, evidence of soil exhaustion resulting from a shortage of manure is hard to find. This is not to say that variations in the amount of manure applied to the land had no effect on crop growth. On the contrary, fluctuations in the availability of manure at Wisbech do appear to have had an impact on arable yields, not least in the 1320s. Livestock numbers were extremely low following the animal murrains of 1319–21 and yields appear to have suffered as a result: in 1321 yield ratios of wheat and mixtill were, respectively, 24 per cent and 35 per cent lower than their average for the early fourteenth century. Yet by the late 1320s numbers of oxen, sheep, and swine had recovered and livestock units were further boosted by the introduction of dairy cattle. Combined with a substantially reduced sown acreage, stocking density had more than quadrupled by this time, and yields responded: in the harvests of 1326 and 1329, yield ratios of wheat and mixtill were now 29 per cent and 10 per cent above average. In fact, some correlation between overall stocking density and productivity (measured by yields per acre) can be detected throughout this period, as the last column of Table 3.5 shows. Breaking this down further by correlating stocking densities of different animals with crop yields provides further insights into the management strategies used for integrating arable and pastoral husbandry at Wisbech. Notably, the positive coefficients are generally much higher for the winter-sown crops, especially bere, suggesting that manure was usually reserved for these more valuable and 37 The mean stocking density at Wisbech in this period was 30.5 units per 100 cereal acres. For England and Norfolk, stocking densities in the period 1300–49 have been calculated as 47.9 and 36.3 units per 100 cereal acres: Campbell, ‘Land, Labour, Livestock’, 153. Livestock units have been calculated using the same method that Campbell employed: (horses 1.0) þ (oxen, cows, and bulls 1.2) þ (immature cattle 0.8) þ (sheep 0.1) þ (swine 0.1). In calculating stocking densities for Wisbech an average was taken of livestock units at the beginning and end of each accounting year.


67

Table 3.5. Correlation of crop yields per acre with stocking densities at Wisbech Barton, 1314–1348 Crop Winter-sown crops Wheat (10) Bere (9) Mixtill (10) Spring-sown crops Oats (10) Legumes (8)

Horses

Cattle

Sheep

Pigs

Total

0.165 0.608 0.365

0.354 0.657 0.383

0.272 0.287 0.052

0.329 0.198 0.009

0.384 0.590 0.288

0.248 0.031

0.269 0.320

0.105 0.180

0.145 0.214

0.095 0.268

Notes: The number of paired variables for each crop is given in parentheses. Italic figures are significant at a 10 per cent level of probability. For each year, mean livestock units were calculated using livestock numbers from the opening and closing Michaelmas of each account. Stocking densities have been calculated per 100 acres sown with each individual crop. Source: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8.

more market-oriented cereals.38 Moreover, intensive hand-spreading of muck appears to have had more influence on the yields of these crops than more extensive forms of manuring: densities of sheep influenced yields of wheat and bere to a small degree, but the highest coefficients for all three crops relate to stocking densities of cattle and horses, whose dung was generally gathered and spread by hand. In fact, the Wisbech accounts record the process of muck-spreading in unusual detail. For example, we are frequently informed of the total amount of muck spread in this way and occasionally of the time of year that this task was performed; notably, this was usually just prior to winter sowing. But while the availability of manure plainly exerted some influence over crop yields at Wisbech, it is also clear that the relationship between stocking densities and productivity was not as significant as might be expected. Changeable weather conditions doubtless played a part here. Yet the results of the same exercise in the same period for the Suffolk demesne of Hinderclay, where stocking densities were even lower, suggest that livestock could have been 38 In fact, the highest coefficients for oats and legumes are negative; in other words, the yields of these crops tended to be lower when stocking densities were high. This might be explained by livestock consuming part of the issue of oats and legumes as a standing crop in the field: it was, after all, common for small quantities of vetch to be consumed by horses in this way.


68 200 180 160 140

Livestock units

Units

120 100 80 60 40 Muck spread

20

1348

1346

1344

1342

1340

1338

1336

1334

1332

1330

1328

1326

1324

1322

1320

1318

1316

1314

0

Fig. 3.1. Livestock units and muck spread at Wisbech Barton, 1314–1348. Source: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8.

more effectively integrated into the cropping cycle.39 In fact, the Wisbech accounts themselves give several indications that livestock manure was not always utilized to its fullest extent; in particular, it appears that the hand-spreading of manure was performed less assiduously as the early fourteenth century progressed. Figure 3.1 shows the amount of muck spread by hand each year at Wisbech together with livestock units for the demesne. In 1314 and 1315 manure resources were clearly husbanded with extreme diligence, for a much greater amount of manure was spread than in any subsequent year even though livestock numbers at that time were relatively low. However, although the number of livestock units had generally risen by the late 1320s and early 1330s, the amount of muck spread had fallen considerably. Animal numbers subsequently returned to the level of the 1310s and early 1320s, but in the fifteen years or so before the Black Death only about half the amount of muck was being spread. This may have been partially offset by an increase in more extensive forms of manuring, for a few demesne fields were enclosed for pasturing livestock in the 1330s and 1340s. Yet it seems likely that large amounts of manure were simply not used at this time, since some animals were clearly being pastured on 39

Stone, ‘Medieval Farm Management’, 626.


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Wisbech High Fen, several miles to the west of the demesne. Neither was the manure that was used being applied as effectively. In part, this is a question of the relative merits of hand-spreading versus pasturing, for grazing—although cheaper—increased the risk of nitrates being washed away by rain before they were ploughed in.40 But the quality of labour used for muck-spreading also deteriorated. Until 1343 all the labour required for this task was hired, but from 1344 onwards only customary labourers were used. The latter were certainly cheaper, but they were considerably less efficient as well.41 The combination of leaving some manure unused and employing less effective labour to apply what remained must have contributed to the declining yields of winter-sown crops at Wisbech in the early fourteenth century. This puts a very different spin on the debate about soil exhaustion in this period. The soil at Wisbech was probably not in as good condition in the 1340s as it had been in the 1310s, but it was not the case that soil fertility was forced down by sheer lack of manure. At the heart of this distinction lies a modern preconception of how medieval farmers should have behaved. As Postan exhorted, ‘There is . . . little doubt that men made such use of manure as their knowledge and their resources allowed. The main restriction on the use of manure—a restriction which got tighter as time went on—was imposed by its paucity.’42 But there was neither a lack of manure or a lack of knowledge at Wisbech. Nor were reeves acting irrationally in changing their attitude to the application of manure. In fact, much as with the cultivation of legumes, investment in muck-spreading in this period was determined more by the prevailing price of wheat than by the availability of manure. Throughout this period, changes in the quantity of muck spread per acre sown were closely related to fluctuations in wheat prices: correlating these two variables produces a coefficient of 0.453, which is significant at a 10 per cent level of probability. By the 1330s and 1340s, when grain prices fell and remained low, it appears that the Wisbech reeves considered the expense of assiduously applying manure to the land by hand to be an unnecessary and unprofitable investment. 40

Shiel, ‘Improving Soil Productivity’, 59. Stone, ‘Productivity of Hired and Customary Labour’. 42 Postan, Medieval Economy and Society, 64. These assumptions are echoed in Newman and Harvey, ‘Did Soil Fertility Decline?’, where they state (at p. 124) that ‘all the [nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium] in food eaten by demesne animals found its way, via their excreta, back on to the demesne land’. 41

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Not only was the land less well manured by the 1340s, but less attention was also paid to the weeding of crops by that time. Weeds were clearly a major headache for medieval farmers. By competing for soil nitrogen with growing crops, weeds could severely impair yields of grain; indeed, it has been suggested that the extreme weediness of the soil was one of the principal determinants of low crop yields in the Middle Ages.43 However, managers of demesne farms made considerable attempts to combat weed growth: heavier seeding helped in this respect, but the two main strategies were to plough the fallow lands, which uprooted weeds and exposed them to the desiccating effect of the sun, and to weed the growing crops by hand. There is not much information about fallow ploughing at Wisbech before the Black Death, but the data that can be garnered from the accounts form a very distinctive trend: customary and sometimes hired labour was used to plough the fallow in every year between 1314 and 1327, and again in 1348; but from 1330 to 1347 there is no mention at all of fallow ploughing in the accounts.44 This is remarkably similar to changes in the proportion of land under wheat, and the pattern of inputs in hand-weeding, about which there is more information in the accounts, is virtually the same. The pre-Black Death labour inputs in weeding at Wisbech are shown in Table 3.6, measured in man-days per 100 acres sown. These figures are derived from the annual expenditure on hiring weeders as no customary labour services were used for this task until after the Black Death; between 1314 and 1327 a daily wage of 1d. was paid to these workers, and it has been assumed that this rate remained constant throughout the period. In most years, all crops were weeded, the only exceptions being 1320 and 1344, when only 95 and 97 per cent of corn was cleaned. As the table shows, weeding inputs fell from a mean of 167 man-days per 100 acres in the years 1314–15 to 98 man-days in the early 1320s, before rising to 141 man-days in the late 1320s and peaking at 236 man-days in the early 1330s. But by the late 1330s and early 1340s inputs had fallen to a mean of 136 man-days per 100 acres and then settled at about 100 man-days in the years immediately preceding the Black Death. 43

Long, ‘Low Yields of Corn’, 468–9. It is possible that the full-time demesne ploughmen made up some of this shortfall in the 1330s and 1340s, though there was certainly no increase in the number of ploughmen employed. 44


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Table 3.6. Labour inputs in weeding at Wisbech Barton, 1314–1348 (man-days per 100 acres sown) Year

Man-days

Year

Man-days

Year

Man-days

1314 1315 1320 1322 1327 1330

150 183 95 100 137 145

1332 1333 1334 1338 1339 1341

235 271 201 138 150 140

1342 1343 1344 1346 1347 1348

123 130 96 100 100 100

Note: The sequence of years is not always consecutive because of missing account rolls. Source: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8.

The fluctuating level of weeding inputs partly reflects year-to-year variations in the persistence of weeds or in the thickness with which corn grew. For example, a marginal note in the account for 1339 explains that higher expenditure on weeding that year was due to a great number of thistles and an abundance of corn. However, financial considerations were vital in determining how much labour to use for this task. As with legume cultivation and muck-spreading, changes in weeding inputs closely shadowed variations in the price of wheat: the mean market value of a quarter of wheat fell from 5.9s. in 1314–15 to 4.9s. in the late 1320s, before rising to 6.5s. in the early 1330s and then dropping to 4.6s. in the early 1340s. Furthermore, the changing intensity with which weeding was carried out appears to have had a significant effect on the productivity of winter-sown crops, particularly of mixtill: correlating weeding inputs per acre and mixtill yields per acre results in a coefficient of 0.567, which is significant at a 10 per cent level of probability. The impact of weeding by hand on yields of wheat and bere was less marked, but then the productivity of these crops seems to have been influenced to a greater extent by the cultivation of legumes, the strategies for manuring, and probably, too, by the changes in fallow ploughing. Not all agrarian practices were scaled down during the early fourteenth century; seeding rates, for example, remained comparatively steady at this time. But change was more common than continuity, and not just with respect to manuring, weeding, and the cultivation of legumes. For instance, until 1333 cereal seed was usually cleaned or purified prior to sowing, and earth dug from ditches was sometimes spread over the arable land in order to raise

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both its level and its fertility, yet neither practice was continued once grain prices had collapsed in the 1330s. The cause of falling yields at Wisbech in the early fourteenth century is not to be found in soil exhaustion per se, but instead in the decisions and actions of the men who ran the farm.

Livestock Husbandry For contemporaries and historians alike, developments in livestock numbers on an episcopal demesne such as Wisbech are complicated by two unpredictable factors. The first of these, as Chapter 2 noted, is the intermittent asset-stripping which took place when a vacancy occurred in the bishopric. In 1329 Edward III in fact declared that the prior and convent of Ely should have custody of episcopal demesnes during future vacancies of the Ely bishopric,45 but this does not appear to have solved the problems that vacancies presented for local farm officials. Between 1314 and 1348 three vacancies occurred in the Ely bishopric—in 1316, 1337, and 1345—and in these years virtually all the livestock at Wisbech was removed from the demesne, with the exception of the horses and oxen required for the continuance of arable cultivation. The second factor that could unexpectedly destabilize the pastoral sector was livestock murrain. It has already been noted that animal numbers were severely depleted by recurrent outbreaks of disease during the late 1310s and early 1320s. At Wisbech thirty-four out of thirty-six oxen were sold off in 1319–20 at only 6s. a head rather than the usual price of about 20s. since they were ‘in murrain’. Horses were clearly affected by disease in that year as well, and were treated for ‘coltenok’ during the winter and ‘favillus’ at harvest. During the remainder of the period, murrain caused the death of 15 per cent of the sheep flock in 1326–7, while the cattle herd was badly afflicted in the early 1330s with mortality rates of 12 per cent in 1332–3 and 17 per cent in 1333–4, and pigs were frequently struck down in the early 1340s, not least in 1343–4 when nearly half of that year’s issue of piglets died from what the reeve described as ‘le pokes’, possibly swine pox or anthrax.46 45

Coleman, Downham-in-the-Isle, 100. Of course, there may well have been other murrains during this period in years for which no account survives for Wisbech. 46


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Nevertheless, decision-making also had a very significant role. It is easiest to discern the role of management in the fluctuating number of horses and oxen at Wisbech since they were unaffected by episcopal vacancies. Oxen were the main plough beast throughout this period, and their number generally fell in line with the contraction of arable acreage, from about forty in the 1310s to between twenty-five and thirty in the 1330s and 1340s. In general, there were fewer horses than oxen, though this situation was temporarily reversed in the early 1320s with the purchase of sixteen mares at a total cost of more than £15, to replace the oxen that died in murrain. During the 1310s and 1320s six plough horses (stotti) were usually kept for harrowing at winter and spring sowing, the bulk of carting work being done by customary labour services. However, by the 1330s and 1340s the majority of carting works had been commuted and carting was now performed by four or five demesne carthorses (equi carecti). Rather than keep both specialist plough horses and carthorses at this time, reeves decided to dispense with the former altogether and used carthorses for both harrowing and carting. This may well have delivered substantial savings, for the commutation of carting works ostensibly brought in 100s. per annum by the 1340s and the working life of carthorses seems to have been slightly longer than that of plough horses.47 But this saving had important repercussions in terms of the quality of cultivation, for the amount of time spent harrowing fell considerably: in the period 1314–20 a mean of 1.73 horse-days per acre sown was spent on this task, but this had dropped to 1.1 horse-days in the 1330s, and 0.84 horse-days in the 1340s. This may, of course, have contributed to the generally lower yields of winter-sown crops at this time, as indeed might the quality of ploughing, which in the decade before the Black Death was probably adversely affected by changes in the provision of food for oxen. For much of the period, oxen were provided with both hay and oats, but from 1339 onwards they received only an allowance of hay.48 Fluctuations in the number of sheep were dominated to a much greater extent by episcopal vacancies, but the guiding hand of 47 Langdon, ‘Economics of Horses and Oxen’, 35–6. At Wisbech in this period, the working life of a carthorse was 4.9 years compared to 4.4 years for a plough horse. 48 This reassessment of fodder supplies for oxen coincides with the commencement of accounting for the issue and use of hay at Wisbech: Stone, ‘Productivity of Hired and Customary Labour’, 643.

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management is nonetheless discernible. Reeves seem to have considered about 500 to 550 sheep to have been the ideal size for the demesne flock, for it numbered 515 in 1315, 495 in 1334, and 540 in 1344, just prior to the three vacancies. In building up numbers after vacancies, sheep were often brought in from outside: in 1314, for instance, 201 ewes, 190 lambs, and nine rams were bought at market, and a further 118 ewes and one ram sent from the bishop’s demesne at Beaudesert.49 However, after the 1316 vacancy and the sheep murrains of the 1320s, the flock was instead built up more slowly and primarily through reproduction, a reaction presumably to the financial difficulties and high livestock prices generated by the agrarian crisis of 1315–22. Occasionally, the pastoral profile at Wisbech diverged from this pattern of building and rebuilding livestock numbers up to certain levels. Most notably, with the contraction of arable cultivation and falling grain prices in the 1320s, reeves sought to expand and diversify the pastoral sector. The Wisbech flock was usually dominated by ewes, yearling ewes, and lambs, but in the late 1320s there was an increase in the number of wethers kept on the manor—reaching 100 in Michaelmas 1327—in an effort to increase wool production. Moreover, this was the only period during the fourteenth century when a herd of cows was kept at Wisbech. However, both these enterprises faded away in the early 1330s, as grain prices temporarily rose, wool prices and the cost of buying oxen fell, and the incidence of cattle murrain increased. The best data on livestock productivity at Wisbech are the fleece weights and fertility rates of sheep. As we have seen, fleece weights recorded in the Wisbech accounts were comparatively high in the early fourteenth century, with a mean annual yield frequently between 2.3 and 2.4 lb per fleece. As with arable farming, the productivity of medieval sheep was affected by many factors, some of which were outside a reeve’s control. But the main reason for the general buoyancy of wool yields at this time seems to have been the careful way in which the sheep flock was managed. After all, mortality levels were seldom high, the flock was regularly replenished with fresh stock bought from market or transferred from elsewhere on the estate, and the grazing land reserved for demesne sheep was generally of good quality. Unfortunately, though, the 49

There was a vacancy in the bishopric in 1310.


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impact of flock management on fleece weights is difficult to observe using information from the early fourteenth century alone because of the reorganization of wool-marketing in this area of the bishop of Ely’s estate: for much of the 1330s and 1340s, as noted earlier, wool from the bishop’s demesne at Beaudesert was sent to Wisbech and the clips from both manors were shipped down to Ely together. Such a strategic change was itself a result of managerial decisionmaking—albeit by estate rather than demesne officials—and may well have been prompted by the drop in the price of wool from 13d. per fleece in 1327 to 7d. per fleece in 1332. But, consequently, many of the wool yields recorded in the Wisbech accounts during this period are distorted by the inclusion of a substantial number of fleeces received from Beaudesert, and it is difficult to ascertain how these would have influenced the pattern of fleece weights from year to year.50 It must be stressed, however, that the long-term trend in fleece weights at Wisbech is not greatly affected. Fleeces taken from sheep raised at Wisbech were still significantly heavier in this period than they were in the years after the Black Death: in the years in which Wisbech wool was weighed separately in the period 1314–48 the mean fleece weight was 2.35 lb; after the Black Death, the mean weight was 1.86 lb, a drop of over 20 per cent. The influence of management on early fourteenth-century wool yields can best be judged from this broader perspective and will be addressed in subsequent chapters. In this period the impact of farm management can be seen most clearly in the changing fertility of ewes. The reproduction rate of ewes at Wisbech appears to have run in cycles during the early fourteenth century, for while lambing rates were consistently high in the years 1327–33 at 99 to 101 lambs per 100 ewes, the rate dropped in the years 1334 and 1339 to 94, before recovering to 96 to 97 between 1341 and 1344. Trow-Smith felt that such a cyclical trend ‘give[s] rise to the suspicion that the sires were often at 50 On the one hand, the Beaudesert flock seems to have contained a large number of heavy-fleeced wethers, and the account for 1344 certainly records a heavy mean fleece weight for Beaudesert wool of 2.75 lb. But, on the other hand, the accuracy of this particular measurement is highly questionable (in contrast to the precise statements of weight in other years, the reeve noted in 1344 that this was merely an estimate and gave a suspiciously round total weight of 100 stone for the 509 fleeces), and in the years when the combined weight of wool from both manors was recorded, the lowest fleece weight—1.98 lb in 1330—came at a time when the proportion of wool contributed by Beaudesert was at its highest.

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fault’.51 Assessing the quality of rams in medieval Wisbech is no easy task, but what can be measured—and what is often taken to have been a significant influence on reproduction rates in the Middle Ages—is the average number of ewes served by each ram.52 At Wisbech a fairly high ratio of 20–30 ewes per ram was maintained in most years, and fluctuations in this ratio may occasionally have affected fertility rates. However, maintaining the health and strength of the ewes seems to have been of much more importance for successful lambing. At Wisbech all ewes that produced a lamb in this period were milked, with the exception of those that were too weak, and this evidence provides a useful yardstick by which to measure the health of the breeding flock. Significantly, given the trend in lambing rates described above, reeves mentioned the weakness of some ewes for milking in every year between 1334 and 1343; 8 per cent of lambproducing ewes were too weak to be milked in 1334–9 and 4 per cent in 1341–3. Ewes lambing for the first time may have been weaker than more mature animals, and there is certainly evidence in the Wisbech accounts that young ewes were sometimes barren, or at least prone to miscarry. But the proportion of young ewes in the breeding flock does not in itself account for the changing pattern in fertility rates; indeed, in 1327 young ewes made up a quarter of the breeding flock, yet each ewe produced at least one lamb. The strength of ewes must have been affected by other factors and two aspects of flock management stand out in this respect, the first of which is grazing. Between 1327 and 1333 sheep were clearly grazed on demesne pasture, stubble, and fallow: no herbage was leased out; Fenditchcroft and Adgerestoncroft were enclosed for the use of the lord’s animals; and railings were constructed around a sheep-house. But following the drop in wool prices in the early 1330s, the demesne herbage was leased out—fetching the substantial sum of £2 16s. 2d. in 1339—and sheep were instead grazed on Wisbech High Fen: a sheepfold was made ‘in the marsh’ in 1333, and the accounts record how branches of ash were bought to repair this fold in 1334 and to make gates for it in 1339; and there was no expenditure during these years on the central sheep-house. The quality of this grazing may well have been inferior and, as we shall 51

Trow-Smith, History of British Livestock Husbandry, 151. These ratios are calculated by comparing numbers at the start of each accounting year, which was approximately the time when ewes were put to the ram. 52


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see in the following chapter, grazing sheep on this low-lying marsh also seems to have increased their susceptibility to debilitating diseases such as liverfluke. In fact, by the early 1340s the decision to pasture the demesne flock there had been reversed. No herbage was now leased ‘because it was pastured with the lord’s animals’, and Podilcroft and Cotecroft were enclosed for grazing. The ewes and lambs were even pastured on 3 acres of meadow in 1342 and the roof of the sheep-house was repaired in the same year. Because of the health implications, these changes in pasturing arrangements may well have contributed to the fall and subsequent rise in lambing rates in the 1330s and 1340s. But the inherent strength of ewes was probably already affected by the second change in management. The health and productivity of sheep depends not only on immediate events, such as the outbreak of disease, but also on their longer-term development, particularly the extent of fodder provision when young. Lambs at Wisbech were always provided with an allowance of oats or legumes during the early fourteenth century, but in the early 1330s the amount of this allowance was drastically reduced, again presumably in response to the fall in wool prices, from 30 bushels of oats for every 100 lambs born in 1330, to 16 bushels in 1332. It is perhaps no surprise, therefore, that the fertility rate in 1332, when the well-fed female lambs of 1330 would first have produced their own lambs, was 99 lambs per 100 ewes, whereas in 1334, when the lambs of 1332 first gave birth, the reproduction rate fell to 94. The allowance for lambs was cut even further in 1334 to 13 bushels of oats per 100 lambs born, but the trend was eventually reversed in 1339 when the provision increased to 21 bushels of oats and vetch; meanwhile, the fertility rate improved from 94 lambs per 100 ewes in 1339 to 97 in 1341.

The Case of John Fayren It has been argued in this chapter that the Wisbech reeves were committed and talented farm managers, who had a clear grasp of the basic principles underlying the economics of production. However, the reported behaviour of one reeve of Wisbech Barton appears to suggest exactly the opposite. In September 1347 John Fayren was sacked as reeve and fined an enormous sum of money: £10, ‘because he did not serve the days assigned to him’; and


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a further £40, ‘for various falsehoods and concealments’. The case has been cited by historians as an example of ‘the penalties imposed upon reeves for falsification (or possibly even inefficiency)’ and as an illustration of ‘the opportunities for corruption presented to the reeve’.53 Of course, some medieval reeves probably were dishonest and some were clearly more competent than others, but closer examination of this particular case suggests that John Fayren was not in fact the duplicitous slouch that the accounts initially lead us to believe; in fact, the accusations against him seem to have been entirely cooked up in order to precipitate his downfall. Several things about the case do not quite add up. First, what little we know about John Fayren’s career suggests that he was a trusted, loyal, and competent official, for he had served at the heart of the manorial administration at Wisbech on and off for fully fifteen years. He was reeve of Wisbech Castle as early as 1332–3, reeve of the barton in 1337–8, reeve at the castle again for five years from September 1338, and then reeve at the barton once more for a further two years from September 1345. Secondly, the complex layering of medieval estate administration and the ‘charge and discharge’ system of manorial accounting was partly designed to guard against the sort of large-scale fraud of which John Fayren stood accused; it seems inconceivable, if he was engaged in activities of this nature to an extent that merited a £50 fine, that he had not been discovered before. Thirdly, and most importantly, the bulk of his massive fine was immediately dropped, seemingly as soon as he promised to relinquish his post. In fact, what probably lay behind this episode was a deeply antagonistic relationship with the chief steward of the bishop’s estate. This would have been problematic at any time, but in the late 1340s the significance was amplified by the fact that the chief steward at that time was John de Lisle, the brother of the bishop. John de Lisle was no stranger to criminal activities,54 but John Fayren’s apparent antipathy towards him seems to have stemmed more from how he carried out his duties as steward. In particular, John de Lisle appears to have been extremely reluctant to invest in the demesne farm at Wisbech, as a distinct pattern in the number of livestock suggests. Following the episcopal vacancy of 1345, during 53 54

Miller, Abbey and Bishopric, 258; Aberth, Criminal Churchmen, 53–4. Aberth, Criminal Churchmen, 50.


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which most of the non-draught livestock at Wisbech had been sold off, the new central administration made comparatively little effort to rebuild the pig herd and sheep flock. Within two years of the previous vacancy, in 1337, numbers of pigs at Wisbech had risen to sixty and numbers of sheep to 408. But in Michaelmas 1347, two years after Thomas de Lisle became bishop and the time at which John Fayren was sacked, there were still only twenty-five pigs and ten sheep at Wisbech. As the reeve well knew, the responsibility for reinvestment across the estate at such times ultimately lay with the chief steward, and he doubtless made his exasperation known.55 Indeed, John Fayren was not alone in his opinion of John de Lisle. The chief steward was seemingly still held up for scorn by Adam Dumpisday, who took up post as reeve of Wisbech Barton in September 1348. In the account rolls for the manor of Downham, a favourite residence of the bishop and his household, John de Lisle is referred to as Johannis de Insula (in other words, John de L’isle).56 However, in Adam Dumpisday’s accounts he is invariably called by the soubriquet John del Idle. Dumpisday seems to have escaped censure, but John Fayren did not; it appears he was sacked because of his loyalty to the manor of Wisbech, rather than through lack of it.

Conclusion Landlords all over the country certainly faced considerable economic difficulties in the management of demesne farms during the early fourteenth century, particularly during the agrarian crisis of 1315–22 and the deflationary era of the 1330s and 1340s. Yet close analysis of the Wisbech accounts reveals how the reeves and bailiffs on this demesne responded to these challenges with remarkable flexibility and proficiency, carefully adjusting the use of resources from year to year as circumstances changed. Such responsiveness and sensitivity to external stimuli was vital if high cash returns were still to be made from farming at this time, and is most clearly visible in the annual changes to cropped acreage. In particular, the proportion of sown acreage devoted to cash crops such as wheat and 55 Although the situation had improved to some extent by Sept. 1348, numbers were still well below their normal levels (fifty-three pigs, 267 sheep). Judging by the figures given in the accounts, livestock disease cannot account for this shortfall. 56 CUL, EDR D10/2/18.

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mixtill was determined by changes in both the actual and relative prices that these crops fetched at market; and judging by changes in gross returns per acre, these sowing strategies were usually successful financially. Farm managers also showed a willingness to experiment with livestock husbandry, as the diversification into wool production and dairy herding in the late 1320s shows; notably, too, both enterprises were brought to a swift end when market conditions deteriorated in the 1330s. But what is perhaps of most significance for the current historiography of this period is that farm managers also responded to the worsening economic climate of the 1330s and 1340s by gradually reducing the intensity with which the land was farmed: the proportion of sown acreage devoted to legumes was reduced; the efficiency with which arable and pastoral husbandry were integrated was allowed to lapse; and weeding, fallow ploughing, and harrowing were all performed less assiduously. These changes in management, which were plainly judicious in terms of profit margins at a time of falling grain prices, must have contributed to the declining yields of winter-sown cereals. Soils at Wisbech may well have been less fertile on the eve of the Black Death, but the responsibility for this lay not with the overuse of arable land or a lack of technological knowledge, but rather with the rational decisions of farm managers. Trends in the productivity and management of sheep have attracted less attention from historians, but it seems likely that much the same storyline was played out here. Productivity fell in the decades before the Black Death but this was brought about by managerial choice not ecological crisis.

4 The ‘Indian Summer’ for Demesne Farming The Black Death reached the shores of southern England in the summer of 1348, and in the eighteen months that followed caused mortality rates to soar in most parts of the country. Estimates of the number of people who died at this time have varied widely, but as Horrox recently wrote, ‘an average mortality of 47 or 48 per cent no longer seems unreasonable’.1 Nor did plague strike only once, for during the third quarter of the fourteenth century there were further outbreaks in 1361–2, 1369, and 1375. Although these were considerably less virulent than the initial outbreak, the sheer frequency of epidemics must have severely hampered any sustained demographic recovery and probably reduced the population of many communities even further.2 In any event, by the mid-1370s the population of England was substantially lower than it had been in the early fourteenth century: compared to a putative total of 5 or 6 million in 1300, the poll tax returns of 1377 suggest a national population at that time of approximately 21=2 –3 million.3 The extent to which the Black Death forced immediate changes in the rural economy and society of medieval England is a question that has long vexed historians, for the third quarter of the fourteenth century is highly enigmatic. On the one hand, this period witnessed significant shifts in rural fortunes, especially in terms of the improving living standards and rising expectations of the peasantry. There was now considerably more land available per head of the population. Despite government efforts to cap levels of pay, 1

Horrox (ed.), Black Death, 235. Evidence for mortality rates in these plagues is even harder to unearth than for 1348–9, but see Hatcher, Plague, Population, 25; Razi, Life, Marriage and Death, 124–31; and Poos, Rural Society, 96. 3 Postan, ‘Medieval Agrarian Society’, 561–2; Hatcher, Plague, Population, 13–14. 2

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agricultural wages also increased: between the 1340s and the 1370s the rate for threshing and winnowing rose by 31 per cent, while daily wages for reaping and binding corn increased by 38 per cent; similarly, the annual stipend for shepherds at Oakington in Cambridgeshire rose from 4s. at the turn of the fourteenth century to 6–7s. in the 1360s and 1370s.4 The terms on which land was held were frequently renegotiated in favour of the tenant as well, reflecting a growing concern among landlords about the potential or actual collapse in their rental income.5 Indeed, even though the scarcity and rising cost of labour effectively increased the value of labour services to landlords, it was generally the case that fewer labour services were enforced after the Black Death. With more land, higher wages, and lower rents, the lifestyles of many peasants improved; in practice, this seems to have meant the consumption of more meat and ale, higher levels of expenditure on better-quality clothing, and more time spent playing various games including football.6 Yet despite these changes, the third quarter of the fourteenth century is also viewed as a time of economic continuity in the English countryside, for on many estates the effects of the massive fall in population seem only to have been felt after the mid-1370s. Some manors appear to have experienced little difficulty in filling vacated holdings in the years after the Black Death, presumably because they had been undersupplied with land in the early fourteenth century.7 Moreover, landlords in some regions, not least in and around Cambridgeshire, seem to have had few problems in enforcing the performance of labour services at this time.8 But for many historians it is the management of demesne farms which 4 Farmer, ‘Prices and Wages’, 816–17; id., ‘Prices and Wages, 1350–1500’, 497, 516–17; Page, Estates of Crowland Abbey, 315. The monetary wages recorded in manorial account rolls may in fact understate the actual level of remuneration in the aftermath of the Black Death: Hatcher, ‘England in the Aftermath of the Black Death’, 19–25. 5 Bailey, ‘Prior and Convent of Ely’, 8; id., Marginal Economy?, 225–6; Schofield, Peasant and Community, 18–20; Horrox (ed.), Black Death, 285–7, 328. The bishop of Ely was plainly experiencing difficulties in finding tenants for his Cambridgeshire manor of Wilburton in the 1360s and 1370s: Maitland, ‘History of a Cambridgeshire Manor’, 423–5. 6 Dyer, ‘Changes in Diet’; Horrox (ed.), Black Death, 131–5, 325, 340–2; Bailey (ed.), English Manor, 1. 7 Lock, ‘Black Death’, 324; Horrox (ed.), Black Death, 256–62. 8 Page, Estates of Crowland Abbey, 126–8; Page, End of Villeinage, 45–6, 60–4; Maitland, ‘History of a Cambridgeshire Manor’, 422; Bailey, ‘Prior and Convent of Ely’, 18; Raftis, Estates of Ramsey Abbey, 264, 278–9.

The ‘Indian Summer’ for Demesne Farming

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exhibits the most obvious signs of continuity in the twenty-five years after the Black Death. Despite the potential difficulties of securing labour at a reasonable cost, landlords generally persevered with direct demesne cultivation between the 1350s and the 1370s. The chief reason for this appears to have been the unexpected behaviour of agricultural prices. Rather than falling in the immediate aftermath of the Black Death, prices for agricultural products were instead buoyed up for several decades by a combination of bad harvests, fewer monetary transactions, and an increased supply of money.9 As Bridbury famously remarked, this was an ‘Indian summer’ for demesne farming,10 and examples of success or at least resilience in seigneurial agriculture in this period are not hard to find: the income of certain lay estates in East Anglia, the south-west, and Wales in the 1370s was only 10 per cent below that of the 1340s; at Canterbury Cathedral Priory ‘demesne agriculture recovered remarkably quickly after 1348 and remained buoyant for the next three decades’; demesne farming on the bishop of Winchester’s manors of Brightwell and Downton was seemingly unaffected by the plague; the account rolls for the estates of the bishop of Worcester in the 1370s reveal the resilience of demesne agriculture in the first half of that decade; even in the ‘marginal’ Breckland, after some initial disruption, most demesnes showed ‘signs of recovery or at least stability between 1355 and 1380’.11 In short, while the long-term effects of the Black Death favoured tenants and workers rather than landlords, the latter seem to have gained a temporary reprieve. Reprieve would seem to be the right word, for the concept of an ‘Indian summer’ not only indicates structural continuity in demesne farming, but also suggests that this was simply the result of good fortune on the part of landlords and that they continued to farm the land in exactly the same way as they had in the years before 1348. It is perhaps for this reason that any hint of low or falling yields in the 1350s and 1360s is taken to be a further sign of the impact of the environment. But the concept of an ‘Indian summer’ can be challenged in a variety of ways. Galloway 9

Rigby, English Society, 99–100; Day, Medieval Market Economy, 64, 113; Farmer, ‘Crop Yields’, 130, 139, 141–3; Mate, ‘Agrarian Economy after the Black 10 Bridbury, ‘Black Death’, 584. Death’, 345. 11 Holmes, Estates of the Higher Nobility, 114–15; Mate, ‘Agrarian Economy after the Black Death’, 341, 344–9; Levett and Ballard, Black Death, 204–16; Dyer, Lords and Peasants, 121–49; Bailey, Marginal Economy?, 232–4.

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has indicated that the movement of prices may not have been quite as favourable for producers as has often been portrayed.12 Moreover, not all estates and demesnes farms shared in the relative prosperity that is thought to have characterized this period. Both Ramsey Abbey and Battle Abbey, for instance, were saddled with heavy debts at this time, while profits dwindled on the bishop of Winchester’s demesne of Rimpton. Some landlords even gave up cultivating their demesnes altogether, as at Cuxham, which was leased in the late 1350s.13 This chapter explores a new angle by examining whether reeves at Wisbech were just fortunate and passive onlookers in the ‘Indian summer’ for demesne farming, or whether—through changing the way in which the farm was run— they in fact played a much more significant part in determining the success of the demesne.

The Sale and Consumption of Produce Patterns in the sale and consumption of produce at Wisbech hint at a significant dislocation in the supply of foodstuffs in the immediate aftermath of the Black Death. In 1350 and 1351 the Wisbech reeve explained to his auditors that the allowance for feeding customary mowers was unusually generous because of the dearth of food and ale, yet local demand also presented the reeves with a significant commercial opportunity. Total sown acreage on the demesne increased from 286 in 1349 to an average of 350 in the years 1352–4. Grain was often sold at Wisbech market, and as in the years 1315–22 and 1347–8, grain sales immediately after the plague were characterized by the modest size of parcels of corn: in 1352, for example, there were thirteen recorded sales of mixtill totalling roughly 80 quarters, including eleven lots of 5 quarters or less. The Wisbech reeves were not alone in exploiting this situation. In 1353 a considerable quantity of mixtill was sold to Robert Palmer, who bought 50 quarters in January, 30 quarters in February, and 40 quarters in March, followed by 20 quarters of wheat in April. The frequency with which he bought Wisbech grain over several 12

Galloway, ‘One Market or Many?’ Raftis, Estates of Ramsey Abbey, 251–9; Searle, Lordship and Community, 257–66; Thornton, ‘Demesne of Rimpton’, 348–406; Harvey, Medieval Oxfordshire Village, 74. 13


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months suggests that he was locally based—a merchant named Robert Palmer is in fact listed in the 1379 poll tax returns for Lynn14—and that he was able to sell it on bit by bit with ease and profit. Trends in the sale and consumption of pigs suggest that the Wisbech reeves also took advantage of local demand for meat in the immediate aftermath of the Black Death. Whereas in the pre-Black Death era the keeping of pigs at Wisbech was primarily intended as a source of meat for the lord’s household, they were often sold at market in the years 1349–53, raising an average of nearly £3 a year.15 Judging by the unusually large amounts of produce transferred around the estate, it was not just the Wisbech area that experienced difficulties with the supply of food at this time. Nor was this just a question of bread. In 1350 beans was sent to Beaudesert as fodder and to Fen Ditton and Littleport for seed; two years later 10 quarters of bere, one of the most important cash crops at Wisbech, was sent to Somersham to feed the lord’s horses. Nevertheless, there are few signs of significant disruption to the demesne economy at Wisbech in the longer term. Indeed, as elsewhere, the direct cultivation of demesne land proved extremely successful at Wisbech throughout the third quarter of the fourteenth century. The gross financial yield from arable cultivation was in fact higher in the 1360s and 1370s than it had been in the 1340s, even though slightly fewer acres were sown. Mean annual income from pastoral husbandry also increased after the Black Death, so that by the 1370s total receipts from market sales at Wisbech were 16 per cent higher than in the 1340s. The rise in arable receipts in the period 1349–75 was not brought about by selling a greater proportion of the different crops. Certainly, bere was grown almost exclusively as a cash crop at this time, with only curallum, the poorest part of the threshed crop, being used occasionally as fodder. Yet the disposal of wheat and mixtill, the two main winter-sown cash crops, was if anything tilted more towards consumption than it had been in the decades before the Black Death. As the most extensively cultivated winter-sown cereal, sales of mixtill generated more income than any other crop, yet it now provided virtually all of the grain supplied to famuli and harvest workers, and from the mid-1360s onwards small quantities 14 15

Owen (ed.), Making of King’s Lynn, 225. Notably, by the 1360s and 1370s estate transferrals predominated once again.

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were also transferred regularly to other manors on the bishop of Ely’s estate. The shift in the disposal of legumes was even more distinct. Before the Black Death 58 per cent of legumes had been sold, but this dropped to just 23 per cent in the third quarter of the fourteenth century; instead, an increasing proportion of legumes was used as fodder. Prior to the Black Death cultivated fodder for manorial livestock consisted chiefly of oats, with legumes contributing only 13 per cent, but in the period 1349–75 the latter formed nearly one-third of all such fodder consumed on the manor. In fact, the only significant exception to the trend towards consuming a higher proportion of crops after the Black Death was the regular sowing of dredge from 1352 onwards, since, unlike any other crop in this period, dredge was sown purely for cash. Between 1352 and 1373 sales of dredge brought in an average of £11 per year, with a maximum of £32 in 1362, thus generating considerably more income than bere, though less than either wheat or mixtill. The adoption of dredge as a regular crop certainly contributed to the success of Wisbech in these years. But even so, the high revenue from market sales at this time cannot be explained without reference to the general buoyancy of grain prices. After all, in the twentyfive years after the Black Death the sale price of wheat produced at Wisbech was on average 29 per cent higher than it had been in the period 1314–48, while selling prices of bere and mixtill increased by 17 per cent and 7 per cent respectively. But equally, we should not overlook the fact that the sale prices recorded in account rolls were to some extent determined by the marketing strategies of the reeves. Table 4.1 shows the timing, size, and prices of mixtill sales recorded in the Wisbech accounts for the accounting years 1351/2 and 1352/3, and reveals that prices varied not only from one year to the next but also from month to month within a given year, sometimes rising and at other times falling: in 1352 mixtill prices increased from 8s. in February to 12s. in May; the following year prices fell from 6s. 8d. in January to 4s. in March. Notably, most of the sales in 1352 were made in April and May of that year, when the price per quarter of mixtill was at its highest. From the reeve’s perspective, it must have been tempting, when presented with the otherwise good price of 8s. per quarter in February, to sell all of the mixtill at that stage. Clearly, he was wise to wait. By the same token, the reeve did well to secure the vast majority of mixtill sales before prices started to fall in late May. Similarly, in 1353 the reeve sold a large amount of


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Table 4.1. Sales of mixtill at Wisbech Barton, 1352–1353 Year

1352

1353

Timing of sale

Size of sale (quarters)

Price per quarter Actual price

Amended pricea

Feb. Apr. Apr. Apr. Apr. Apr. May May 17 May May May May — Jan. Jan. Feb. 22 Feb. 2 Mar. 2 Mar. 16 Mar. 30 Mar. Mar. —

30 10 2 5 5 5 5 5 2 5 2 3 1.375 50 10 10 20 20 10 20 20 7.375 0.5

8s. 9s. 9s. 10d. 9s. 9s. 8d. 10s. 4d. 10s. 10s. 8d. 12s. 12s. 11s. 9s. 8d. 9s. 6s. 8d. 6s. 5s. 4d. 5s. 5s. 5s. 5s. 4s. 4s. 5s.

9s. — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — 5s. 6d. 5s. 6d. 5s. 6d. 5s. 6d. 5s. 6d. 5s. —

a Auditors occasionally crossed out the price that the reeve originally recorded and replaced it with a higher price, reflecting what they thought the reeve should have been able to get for the grain.

Source: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8.

mixtill in January when prices were considerably higher than they were later to be. He also disposed of much of the remainder of the crop in late February and early March before prices started to drift further downwards in late March. Given the trends shown in Table 4.1, the mixtill prices recorded in the Wisbech accounts might have been very different had the reeve been less skilled in reading the market. The average price that he secured for mixtill in 1352 was 9.2s. per quarter, when he could have sold it all at 8s. in February; in 1353 the reeve achieved an average of 5.4s. per quarter when he

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might have waited and got 4s. per quarter in late March. In short, the price that the reeve actually got was approximately 20 per cent higher than it might otherwise have been; if such a margin had been repeated from year to year, the long-term trend in prices would have been significantly different. Furthermore, these margins would have had a substantial impact on gross revenues. In 1352, had all the mixtill been sold in February at 8s. per quarter, the reeve would have made approximately £5 less on that crop than he actually did. In 1353 the overall loss on mixtill would have been greater still, at £12, had all the grain been sold in late March at 4s. per quarter. The prices used in these calculations are those that the reeve actually received for the grain. Occasionally, though, the estate auditors felt that the reeve could have secured a better price per quarter; these instances are indicated by the higher prices shown in the last column of Table 4.1. Acting with hindsight, the auditors presumably felt that the reeve should have waited before agreeing the sale in February 1352 and should have sold much of the grain earlier in the spring of 1353. Notably, though, the auditors’ adjustments were by no means sweeping and they did not suggest that the reeve should have sold all of the mixtill at its highest price. Indeed, if their adjustments are taken to be a counsel of perfection, then it must be concluded that the reeve did an extremely good job.16 Given that the mean annual income from sales of all produce at Wisbech in the 1350s was just over £76, it is clear that the marketing strategies of reeves made a very significant difference to the success of Wisbech in these years. Even before the intervention of the auditors, the Indian summer for demesne farming would have seemed much less sunny had reeves acted in a less judicious fashion. Decisions about the sale and consumption of produce at Wisbech must often have been taken on the spot by local officials. However, changes in the disposal of pastoral goods after the Black Death also reveal the influence of centralized decision-making. This is particularly the case with sheep-farming. After 1350 Wisbech dealt only with fleeces clipped from its own flock, rather than acting as a collecting point for wool shorn from the bishop’s northern fen flocks, as had been the case before the Black Death. Moreover, while the wool clip was still sent for sale in Ely in 1350, 1351, and 1364, it became 16 If the auditors’ suggestions are incorporated, the average mixtill price rises to 9.6s. in 1352 and 5.8s. in 1353, and the hypothetical margin of difference in gross revenue from mixtill sales to approximately £6 and £15 respectively.


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increasingly common in this period to sell fleeces at Wisbech instead, which regularly fetched £11 or £12 per annum in the 1360s and early 1370s. This change in strategy was presumably effected in order to cut the cost of transporting the wool, which by this period may have outweighed any price advantage that was to be gained by selling wool at Ely. Thereafter, wool was probably sold in bulk to merchants trading in or around the Wash ports, for in 1372 the Wisbech reeve noted that thirty fleeces were given to a merchant as a bonus on the sale of 797 fleeces.17 This meant that the Wisbech reeves now had further marketing decisions to make, not least concerning the timing of the sale of wool. By the late 1360s and early 1370s wool was in fact frequently kept for a year or more prior to sale, presumably when reeves were unable to find a purchaser at an acceptable price; in fact, of the 827 fleeces that were sold and given to the aforesaid merchant, only 225 fleeces had been shorn that year, while 285 were shorn the previous summer and 317 the year before that. Nor was this the only strategic adjustment that was made at this time, for while the milking of ewes continued at Wisbech for much of this period, raising an average of 46.2s. per annum in the years 1349–54, this became increasingly rare by the late 1360s and early 1370s.

Cereal-Cropping Strategies The amount of revenue derived from the arable sector was not determined simply by grain prices; the decisions that were made by reeves about how much of each type of corn to sow also made a significant difference to gross income. The post-Black Death era saw some notable changes in this respect. After a low point in the 1330s and early 1340s, wheat began to occupy a greater share of the cultivated area again, rising from 12 per cent on the eve of the Black Death to 15 per cent in the early 1350s and 21 per cent in the 1360s, though it subsequently fell back to 16 per cent of sown acreage in the early 1370s. The trends for other winter-sown crops were essentially the reverse of this. After rising to a high point of 31 per cent in the early 1350s, the proportion of sown acreage under mixtill 17 At the same time, the bishop and his council hedged their bets on the wool market, for yearlings and lambs from Wisbech were no longer sent to nearby Beaudesert, but instead by the 1360s and 1370s to Doddington, which was much closer to Ely.

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fell to 22 per cent in the 1360s, before recovering to 26 per cent in the early 1370s. Meanwhile, bere’s share of the sown area declined to 3 per cent in the 1350s and early 1360s, but then also recovered to 8 per cent in the late 1360s and early 1370s. With regard to spring-sown cereals, dredge was sown regularly from 1352 onwards and occupied 8 per cent of sown acreage by the 1360s and early 1370s. Otherwise, spring sowing continued to be dominated by oats. Much as in the first half of the fourteenth century, adjustments to the acreage sown with cash crops at Wisbech in the years 1349–54 were made chiefly in response to fluctuations in market price.18 For example, when the price of wheat increased from 5.5s. per quarter in 1350 to 11.7s. per quarter in 1352, the acreage under wheat rose from 40 to 63 acres. Then, when wheat prices fell to just 4s. per quarter in the following year, only 38 acres were sown, though a slight price recovery in 1354 prompted the sowing of 58 acres of wheat in that year.19 Again, however, it was not only movements in absolute price that were of importance but movements in relative price too. Indeed, mixtill was sown very widely in 1353 despite also suffering a drop in market price. Mixtill prices, though, fell by only 39 per cent between 1352 and 1353 compared to a fall of 66 per cent in wheat prices, producing an unusual situation in 1353 in which the selling price of mixtill was one and a half times greater than that of wheat. Similarly, the sowing strategy for bere in the years 1349–54 seems to have been influenced almost entirely by its market price relative to that of wheat in the previous year. An increase in the relative price of bere from 53 to 74 per cent of the price of wheat between 1347 and 1348 resulted in 26 acres of bere being sown in 1349, 6 acres more than in 1348. But when the relative price of bere dropped to 54 per cent of that of wheat in 1349, and 51 per cent in 1352, the area sown with bere was reduced to 14 acres in 1350 and 7 acres in 1353. As with mixtill, however, 18 Because of the steep fall in total sown acreage in the 1310s and 1320s, cerealcropping strategies were explained in the previous chapter using the proportion of sown land occupied by each crop. In this and subsequent chapters more emphasis is laid on the acreage sown with each crop, since total sown acreage changed but little. 19 In this period the timing of corn sales over the course of the agricultural year was only recorded for the years 1349–54: the general pattern of these sales was much the same as in the 1330s and 1340s, though any early winter sales were usually now of wheat rather than mixtill, presumably in order to test the market price of wheat as it became more important as a cash crop again.


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the price of bere in 1353 was comparatively high, which encouraged the reeve to expand the cultivation of bere to 20 acres in 1354. Yet fluctuating prices were not the only factor that reeves took into account when drawing up the cropping schedule each year. In some years in the early 1350s, bad weather literally muddied the waters. Because of flooding, bere had yielded exceptionally badly in 1350, with none consequently available for sale in the following year. In response, reeves first experimented by sowing a larger acreage with bere, presumably in order to raise net yields of what was their purest cash crop at that time. Then, in 1352, they tried dredge as an alternative cash crop. Dredge could be malted for ale, the demand for which was rising in the aftermath of the Black Death, and also sidestepped the threat of poor winter weather; in fact, reeves might have anticipated that, as an oats mixture, dredge would be comparatively resilient to wet conditions. If so, they made an excellent choice, for not only was it by far the highest-yielding spring-sown crop in the twenty years after its introduction, with a mean yield of 23 bushels per acre, but its productivity was also very stable; yields per acre of dredge in fact varied less at this time than those of oats. Whatever the precise motive, the introduction of dredge was clearly deemed a success, for it was retained in the cropping schedule for the next seventy years or so, occasionally occupying more than 50 acres of land. As in the early fourteenth century, the sowing strategy for oats was basically determined by consumption patterns. However, poor weather conditions sometimes exerted a greater influence. For instance, the harsh winter of 1366–7, which the reeve claimed was reason enough for hiring an extra shepherd, may well have curtailed the area that could profitably be sown with wheat and mixtill, and encouraged the area under oats to be increased from 101 acres in 1366 to 140 acres. Similarly, the acreage under oats appears to have been expanded in 1370 because of unusually high water levels. Most striking of all was the impact of the great storm of January 1362. The chronicler of Louth Park Abbey in Lincolnshire wrote that ‘a strong gale blew from the north so violently for a day and a night that it flattened trees, mills, houses and a great many church towers’.20 Fifty miles to the south, at Wisbech, it caused severe local flooding, destroyed the grange, and blew down the manor gates. 20

Horrox (ed.), Black Death, 86.

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It also seems to have destroyed most of the winter-sown crops, for the account roll compiled in September 1362 records that a total of only 224 acres were sown that year, consisting of 3 acres of bere, 9 acres of legumes, 53 acres of dredge, and 159 acres of oats. In other words, winter-sown crops made up just 1 per cent of the total acreage that was harvested, the rest presumably having been wrecked by the storm; by contrast, oats contributed 71 per cent. Despite difficult weather conditions, the underlying influence on the amount of land sown with each cash crop during the 1360s and 1370s was still estimated profit. As we have seen, farm managers usually relied on changes in price as an indicator of financial return and, when comparing the potential of different crops, estimated movements in relative price. This seems to have been a highly successful strategy, but it would only continue to be so while the yield trends of the different crops remained roughly synchronized with one another, since financial return relied on yields as well as prices. It is thus testimony to the intent and skill of the Wisbech reeves that they adjusted their cropping strategies during the 1360s and 1370s, when the yields of various crops began to diverge more markedly than they had in previous decades. The impact of yields on the cropping schedule can be seen in the relationship that developed between bere and dredge. These cash crops seem to have been grown in tandem during the 1360s and early 1370s, occupying a total of 23–41 acres until 1368 and 40–52 acres thereafter, and the balance between the two fluctuated considerably from year to year. Although market prices were clearly taken into account in determining this balance, yield variation often proved more significant. For example, the relatively high yield of dredge in the harvest of 1362 (with a yield per acre nearly twice that of bere) prompted the sowing of 27 acres of dredge and no bere in 1363, at which point both crops fetched a market price of 4s. per quarter. Similarly, the dominance of bere over dredge in the cropping schedules of 1367 and 1368 reflects the comparatively high yields of bere between 1364 and 1367.21 The impact of yields on sown acreage in this period is even more striking in the case of wheat and mixtill. The acreage sown with wheat was gradually halved in the ten years after 1367 despite 21

After the poor harvest of 1362, bere yields rose enormously to 35.3 and 46.1 bushels per acre in 1364 and 1365.


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140

Index (1332 yield = 100)

120

Mixtill

100 80 60

Wheat

40 20

1372

1369

1366

1363

1360

1357

1354

1351

1348

1345

1342

1339

1336

1333

1330

0

Fig. 4.1. Index of wheat and mixtill yields per acre at Wisbech Barton, 1330–1372. Source: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8.

extremely high prices in 1370 and 1371, while the acreage under mixtill was maintained at 65–73 acres in the decade after 1369, even though the market value of mixtill slipped to 3.3s. or lower on several occasions in the 1370s. This sowing strategy appears to be counter-intuitive, but farm officials were in fact acting in a highly rational fashion, for yields of wheat and mixtill diverged markedly during this period. As Figure 4.1 shows, the productivity trends of these crops were very similar until the 1360s, but in the years 1367–72 this synchronization was no longer apparent. Wheat yields continued to fall from the mid-1360s onwards, while yields of mixtill were often extremely high. As a result, the mixtill harvest in 1368 and 1370 was approximately three times heavier per acre than that of wheat. The relative selling price of mixtill may have dropped steadily between the 1350s and the 1370s, but the financial returns from mixtill were nevertheless significantly higher because of this difference in yields.22 22 This was clearly a situation that needed to be monitored, and it is notable that after the comparatively bountiful wheat harvest of 1371 there was a temporary expansion of wheat cultivation in 1372.

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Indeed, the cropping strategies adopted by Wisbech reeves seem to have been wholly judicious in terms of sustaining gross income. Most notably, the rapid expansion of mixtill acreage between 1349 and 1353 was justified by an equally rapid rise in the gross return per acre on that crop, which reached 133–5d. per acre from the harvests of 1351 and 1352, a level that had not been attained since the harvest of 1314. Likewise, the introduction of dredge to the cropping schedule was vindicated by an average return from that crop of 127d. per acre. Similarly, the decision to reduce the acreage under wheat and expand that sown with mixtill, bere, and dredge in the late 1360s and early 1370s was justified by the substantially higher gross returns on these crops: in the years 1368–72 wheat returned 68d. per acre, but mixtill 123d., bere 133d., and dredge 136d. Comparison of adjustments in sown acreage with subsequent changes in gross returns per acre suggests that year-to-year cropping strategies were generally very effective as well, especially for wintersown crops. For instance, the area sown with wheat fluctuated from 60 acres in 1367 to 48 acres in 1368, 67 acres in 1369, and 48 acres again in 1370, and the returns per acre on these crops display a very similar pattern, going from 78d. from the harvest of 1367 to 60d., 89d., and 69d. in the succeeding ones.23 But while tracking the returns on each harvest in this way allows us to glimpse the remarkable ability of the Wisbech reeves to predict changes in returns per acre, it provides little sense of the extent to which these decisions could make a difference to the finances of the farm. However, the value of flexibility in the sowing of cash crops at Wisbech can be assessed by calculating the sum of the returns on wheat, mixtill, bere, and dredge, and comparing this with the total revenue that would have been realized if the acreage of each crop were left at its average for the period. For the seven years for which this calculation can be made in the 1360s and early 1370s, flexible cropping enabled the demesne to produce a total of £211=2 more than it otherwise would have.24 In other words, the cropping strategies 23 Sometimes the effectiveness with which winter crops were sown at this time can best be demonstrated by comparing changes in cropped acreage and returns per acre for different crops. For instance, the acreage sown with wheat was reduced between 1370 and 1371 at the same time that returns per acre on wheat increased, but this decision was vindicated by the better returns made from the 1371 harvests of mixtill and bere. 24 The average sown acreage used as the baseline for each crop was the average for the years 1363–73 as a whole.


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that the reeves employed for these cash crops brought in an average of just over £3 per annum at this time. Nor should the extra revenue generated by devoting a higher proportion of the spring-sown acreage to dredge be ignored. The degree to which this decision made a financial difference can be assessed using another hypothetical situation, in which the revenue generated by spring-sown crops in the 1360s and early 1370s is compared to the revenue that would have been generated had the spring cropping schedule been left as it was in the years 1349–54. By sowing more dredge at the expense of legumes and oats, the demesne made almost £5 per annum more than it otherwise would have.25 Once again, the conclusion must be drawn that the Indian summer for demesne agriculture was not something that simply happened fortuitously; on the contrary, its brightness was in no small measure determined by the men who made the decisions.

Crop Rotation and Field Management The adjustments that reeves made to the cropping schedules played a vital part in the success of Wisbech after the Black Death. However, unravelling the strategies that were generally used also enables us to identify years in which a reeve was less responsive to prevailing conditions; during this period the mid-1360s stand out as such a time. By no means all of the strategies faltered, but even so the acreage under wheat was unresponsive to prices, dredge continued to be sown more widely than bere even though the latter produced considerably better yields, and oats occupied an unusually stable acreage. Notably, all these decisions were made by one reeve, Robert Black, who held office between 1362 and 1366. Is this, then, an example of an unusually poor choice of reeve? In order to explore this question we need to examine the organization and use of fields. Some of the more immediate effects of the high winds during the great storm of 1362 have already been described. But in both the short and the longer term, flooding seems to have presented the greater threat. The Wisbech area had already experienced severe 25 It should be stressed that the wider adoption of dredge was not a change that would have made sense in the pre-Black Death era: as Table 3.2 showed, the returns per acre on dredge from the harvest of 1341 were in fact lower than those for both oats and legumes.

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problems with flooding a few years before the great storm,26 and we can be left in no doubt about the local impact of flooding in 1362. The river burst its banks, the manorial turbary was inundated, and, as we have seen, the winter-sown crops were almost entirely destroyed. Flooding also seems to have affected the level of rents for the parcels of demesne land that were at lease. Some land at Hirnefeld, for instance, fetched 41d. per acre; other parts of the field just 24d. per acre. The mean level of rent for land at Inham was also unusually low that year, at 18.4d. per acre, compared to 26.1d. per acre six years later. As recently reclaimed land, Inham must have been particularly at risk at times of heavy rainfall.27 These floods seem to have prompted substantial changes in the layout and use of arable fields at Wisbech. Indeed, it is probably no exaggeration to say that, throughout his reeveship, Robert Black was preoccupied with the reorganization of demesne cropping. The main elements of this reorganization are summarized in Table 4.2. The immediate necessity, of course, was to attempt to salvage the cropping schedule of 1361–2 following the storm of January 1362. It appears that winter-sown crops had been sown and destroyed at Adgerestoncroft, Cotecroft, and Smalemedwe (1), for on these fields the winter phase of a three-course rotation was replaced with spring-sown crops in that year: presumably, the flood waters had retreated sufficiently by March or April for sowing to take place. At Adgerestoncroft it even proved possible to salvage a remnant of the earlier winter-sown crop, for 3 acres of bere survived alongside the newly sown dredge, although this patch of bere yielded only a paltry 14 bushels per acre. The situation on other fields was clearly more difficult to recover. For example, the otherwise regular rotation at Lythesmedwe was disrupted by the insertion of an extra fallow course in 1362, while one field, which had been regularly cultivated in the early 1350s, disappeared altogether from the accounts.28 In the next few years Robert Black set about making a series of substantial changes to the organization of the Wisbech fields. Some, presumably those most threatened by flood water, were either reduced in size or cultivated less frequently. For example, between 26

Pugh (ed.), VCH Cambridge, iv. 244. It is perhaps an indication of growing uncertainty about the viability of Inham that it was specifically described as purprestura, or encroachment, in demesne leases of the late 1360s and early 1370s. 28 This was another field called Smalemedwe. 27


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Table 4.2. Rotation of crops on the main fields at Wisbech Barton, 1362–1367 (acres) Field

1362

Adgerestoncroft Cotecroft Fenlond Fourscoreacres Gilberdesdole Inham Lythesmedwe Podilcroft Pygges (1) Pygges (2) Pygges (3) Smalemedwe (1) Smalemedwe (2) Southale Sybaldesholm

27d, 20o, 14d, f 22o, f f 22o 40o f f 25o 12o f 10o

1363 3b 12d, 5l 8o 4l

a

20o, 10d 40o f 36w, 16m, 16o f 20m f f f 30wf f 25o 12lh 30o f

1364

1365

1366

1367

f f 22m 80ob 20m, 6b f 26we 22w 33m, 7w 22o, 8lg f f 12m 30o 10m

15w, 15m 32m, 8b 11o, (11l) f 26d 20mc 26o 22o 40o 30o 17w 25w f f 5w, 5m

30o 20o, 6l 22w 68m, 12w 26o 20dd f f f f f 25o 11bh 30w 10di

f f 12l, 10o 80o f 20oc (26w) (22w) (40m) (18b, 12w) (17m) f 12d 30o (10b)

Notes: w ¼ wheat, b ¼ bere, m ¼ mixtill; o ¼ oats, d ¼ dredge, l ¼ legumes, f ¼ fallow. Plausible locations for crops missing from the schedules are given in parentheses. a b c d e f g h i

Dredge labelled ‘Matecroft’. Labelled ‘next to Longdrane’. Mistakenly attributed to Pygges? Labelled ‘next to chapel of Blessed Mary’. Labelled ‘Bihesmedwe’. Labelled ‘next to Smalemedwe’. Labelled ‘Triginta acres’. Labelled ‘Stoncroft’. Labelled ‘Manor croft’.


30 and 52 acres of Inham had been sown with demesne crops in the early 1350s, but for the remainder of the fourteenth century only 20 acres was cultivated there. Gilberdesdole, which bordered the river Nene on the eastern flank of the manor, was used less frequently after the mid-1360s.29 To compensate, cropping was expanded elsewhere on the demesne, on fields which must have been deemed less risky to cultivate. In 1364, for example, Fourscoreacres—which lay on the southern edge of the manor—was expanded from 67 acres or so to its full extent of 80 acres. In the previous year Southale, which probably lay in the same part of the manor, was cultivated for the first time; notably, Robert Black was careful to sow it at first with 29

When Gilberdesdole was cultivated in the late 1360s and early 1370s, it is notable that it was sown with oats and mixtill, both of which were hardy crops.

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two crops of hardy oats, but from then on it held a regular threecourse rotation. At about the same time the reeve also undertook to rationalize and engross certain fields. For example, until 1363 Fourscoreacres was divided into at least two plots of land that were usually sown at different stages of a rotation, but from 1364 onwards it was always sown at the same stage of a rotation and often with just one crop. Likewise, the three parts of Oldmedwe, which in the previous thirty years had been sown in different seasons and under a variety of names, were amalgamated by Robert Black to form one field of 87 acres called Pygges (the name of the largest chunk of the field in the 1350s and early 1360s).30 All of Pygges was sown together for the first time in 1365 and from then on the crops sown there were always at the same stage of the rotation. Common sense suggests that, in economic terms, bringing together several smaller parcels of land to make a larger field is a highly rational course of action. This may well be so, but given the basically three-course nature of the rotational system it was by no means a simple managerial job. Not only was it necessary to synchronize rotations on the fields that were to be amalgamated, which at Pygges meant adding a second spring course in place of fallow in 1365, but in order to maintain some sort of shape and balance to the overall cropping schedule, Robert Black needed to plan a number of adjustments to the rotation of crops on other fields. For example, the regular rotation at Inham in 1362 and 1363 was disrupted between 1364 and 1366 before resuming again from 1367 to 1373. Similarly, Sybaldesholm carried a regular rotation from 1349 to 1364 and from 1367 to 1373, but this needed to be rejigged in the intervening years. Indeed, Fenlond was cropped continuously between 1364 and 1372.31 Given the time and effort required to effect these changes, we should perhaps be more sympathetic to his comparatively unresponsive management of sown acreage in these years. With the likelihood of heavy rain in some years and the associated perils of farming in this fenland and coastal environment, it is probably fair to say that the Indian summer at Wisbech would 30

This was later called Nymendole. The period of field reorganization under Robert Black was not the only occasion on which changes were made to cropping arrangements: for example, Adgerestoncroft and Podilcroft were fallowed in 1370–1 when they should otherwise have been cropped, possibly following further flood damage, for in 1369–70 repairs were made to the sea wall. Both fields were situated on the seaward edge of the manor. 31


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have been considerably less successful without such changes; certainly, it would have been a great deal soggier. A more tangible effect of the reorganization of cropping in the 1360s was that it brought significant changes to the locations in which some of the crops were sown, particularly wheat and mixtill. Table 4.3 compares the proportionate distribution of these two crops in 1349–54 and 1368–73, on the basis that these periods span the years of field reorganization, and that each covers six consecutive years of cropping (i.e. two cycles of a three-course rotation). As the table shows, some fields, notably Pygges–Oldmedwe but also Fenlond and Cotecroft, were increasingly sown with mixtill at the expense of wheat: in the period 1349–54 these fields carried 30.8 per cent of wheat and 35.1 per cent of mixtill, but by 1368–73, 7.4 per cent of wheat and 58.5 per cent of mixtill. Meanwhile, a greater proportion of wheat, but less mixtill, was concentrated on Inham, Lythesmedwe, and Podilcroft: wheat-sowing on these fields increased from 8.5 per cent in the years 1349–54 to 38.3 per cent by 1368–73, while the proportion of mixtill sown there fell from 19.2 per cent to nothing at all. In a similar fashion, the proportion of these crops sown on less frequently cultivated fields changed considerably over time. In the earlier period 19 per cent of wheat was sown on Matecroft, Brokenes, and Le Tillerie and 6.7 per cent of mixtill on Hirnefeld, but while 14.5 per cent of mixtill was sown on Southale in the late 1360s and early 1370s, no wheat at all was sown on such fields. Given that soil fertility probably varied from one field to another, these changes in the distribution of cropping may well have contributed to the divergent behaviour of wheat and mixtill yields in the late 1360s and early 1370s. In fact, this can crudely be demonstrated by using the method described in the last chapter for estimating the relative fertility of different fields. Notably, two of the most fertile fields during the third quarter of the fourteenth century according to this index (only taking years when they were sown with bere or dredge) were Cotecroft and Pygges– Oldmedwe, while two of the least productive were Podilcroft and Smalemedwe–Gretemedwe.32 Other than inherent soil quality, one factor that must have been influential was the sustainability of crop rotations on each of the fields. Notably, the rotations on 32 Subtracting the overall cereal yield index from the yield index for bere or dredge gives mean results of: Cotecroft, þ47; Pygges–Oldmedwe, þ14; Smalemedwe–Gretemedwe, 15; Podilcroft, 25.


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Table 4.3. Cropping location of wheat and mixtill at Wisbech Barton, 1349–1354 and 1368–1373 (%) Crop

Wheat

Mixtill

1349–54

1368–73

Field

%

Field

%

Smalemedwe– Gretemedwe Pygges–Oldmedwe Matecroft Lythesmedwe Fenlond Sybaldesholm Brokenes Fourscoreacres Le Tillerie Cotecroft

27.5

Smalemedwe– Gretemedwe Fourscoreacres Lythesmedwe Inham Podilcroft Sybaldesholm Pygges–Oldmedwe Fenlond Land of Galfrid Richard

25.5

Fourscoreacres Pygges–Oldmedwe Cotecroft Gilberdesdole Podilcroft Fenlond Hirnefeld Inham Adgerestoncroft Lythesmedwe Smalemedwe– Gretemedwe Barcroft

22.6 (25.9) 9.8 8.5 6.9 6.6 5.9 4.3 3.3 1.3 19.9 (20.6) 18.3 9.4 8.7 7.5 7.4 6.7 6.7 6.4 5.0 2.0

Pygges–Oldmedwe Fourscoreacres Cotecroft Southale Fenlond Gilberdesdole Land of Galfrid Richard

20.5 17.5 13.4 7.4 6.7 4.0 3.4 1.5 35.0 19.4 14.7 14.5 8.8 6.4 1.2

1.3

Notes: Aggregate figures are given for Smalemedwe–Gretemedwe and Pygges–Oldmedwe since these fields were merged between 1349–54 and 1368–73. Percentages in parentheses include plausible locations for crops missing from the schedules. Source: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8.

Smalemedwe–Gretemedwe and Sybaldesholm, accounting for approximately one-third of wheat sown in both periods, remained fairly constant over time, whereas Cotecroft and Gilberdesdole, which accounted for approximately one-fifth of mixtill sown in both periods, were used less intensively in the late 1360s and early 1370s.


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Agrarian Techniques and the Maintenance of Soil Fertility The divergence in mixtill and wheat yields in the late 1360s and early 1370s was a fairly unusual phenomenon, for the yields of the various crops generally moved in similar directions. Compared to the years 1346–8, all crops yielded poorly in the immediate aftermath of the Black Death. By the mid-1360s the yield of each crop had improved, although they often remained slightly below those of the late 1340s. With the exception of mixtill, yields subsequently declined again, though only the yield of wheat was lower in the late 1360s and early 1370s than in the early 1350s. The clarity of these trends suggests that some of the factors influencing arable productivity in this period were more generally felt. These factors are most easily dealt with in two sub-periods: the dislocation in the immediate wake of the Black Death; and the impact of decisionmaking in the 1360s and 1370s. The Immediate Aftermath of the Black Death The extremely low yields of the years 1349–53 are surprising, for inputs at this time seem to have been maintained at a comparatively high level. Legumes continued to be sown on approximately the same proportion of the cropped acreage as they had in the years immediately preceding the Black Death, occupying an average of 7.3 per cent of the sown area. The supply of manure was generally more plentiful than it had been for much of the first half of the fourteenth century; in fact, the number of livestock units rose rapidly in the years either side of the plague, from 39.1 at Michaelmas 1347 to 86.9 in 1349 and 137.7 in 1353. And labour inputs in weeding were set at an extremely high level in the few years after the Black Death, often exceeding that of the pre-plague years. Such high inputs in weeding probably signify an attempt to take advantage of the high grain prices in the immediate aftermath of the plague.33 But whatever the aim, the experiment clearly met with limited success: the harvests of 1350 and 1351 in particular were among the worst of the fourteenth century. With high inputs but low yields in these years, it is tempting to turn to the weather for an 33

In 1352, for example, market sales of wheat and mixtill fetched an average of 11.7s. and 9.7s. per quarter respectively.

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all-encompassing explanation. Indeed, following the poor harvest of 1350, the reeve himself noted in the account roll that not much bere had been produced ‘because Cotecroft was covered with water’. Alternatively, lawlessness may have become more of a problem in the aftermath of the Black Death, perhaps leading to an increasing number of sheaves of corn being stolen from field or barn. Certainly, a man was hired to ‘watch by night’ for the five weeks of the harvest of 1352, and a ‘granger’ was employed at no small cost during the accounting years 1348/9, 1351/2, and 1352/3, presumably in order to keep an eye on the lord’s granges.34 Notably, when the two worst harvests occurred, the accounts indicate that no granger was employed and no provision was made for greater watchfulness when gathering in the corn. However, the main problem at this time seems to have been even more fundamental. The Wisbech reeves appear to have experienced considerable difficulties with the labour force in the immediate aftermath of the plague. Of course, one potential problem for farmers at this time was simply the scarcity of labour. The chronicler Henry Knighton left us with a vivid image of the countryside after the Black Death, in which ripened corn—that had been so much in demand twelve months earlier—remained unreaped and rotted in the fields.35 This may well have been an accurate portrayal of some parts of the English landscape in the summer of 1349: on small family farms the death of parents and children was not only devastating in itself, but could well have resulted in a sheer lack of hands to wield the sickles; for some commercial farmers, too, the sudden rise in wages and the rising cost of gathering in the harvest may have proved prohibitive. But at Wisbech farm officials seem to have been able to secure sufficient numbers of workers, both for the harvest of 1349 and in the months and years that followed. In part, this was because they were able and prepared to pay higher wages for hired labourers, but it also reflects their ability to enforce some of the labour services owed by unfree tenants in a range of tasks. But while finding enough labourers, whether hired or customary, did not present a problem in these years, their quality and efficiency may well have done. In the first place, customary labour—though 34 The granger was clearly superior to the famuli: he was paid more, his stipend was recorded in a separate paragraph in the accounts, and he was invariably named. For instance, Walter Parker was paid 54s. to act as granger between 8 Nov. 1351 and 35 Horrox (ed.), Black Death, 78. 29 Sept. 1352.


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relatively inexpensive at a time of rising wages—was significantly less productive than hired labour. Detailed evidence for the relative productivity of these two forms of labour has been extracted from the Wisbech accounts and published elsewhere;36 however, one further example usefully illustrates the margin of the difference. In the account for 1349/50 the expense of hiring workers to make 28 furlongs of drainage channels at winter sowing was crossed out in favour of using customary labour for this task: at 3d. per furlong, the total cost of hired labour for this job would have been 84d., while the effective cost of using customary labour, in terms of forgoing commutation payments, was only 42d. Clearly, this made sense. Yet hired labour had invariably been used for this task during the 1340s, even though it cost more than customary labour at that time as well: the cost of hiring workers to make 28 furlongs of channels was then 70d., whereas the value of commuted labour services for this work remained unchanged at 42d. Presumably, it was only when hired workers began to cost twice as much as labour services that farm officials no longer considered it worthwhile to pay for the extra productivity that hired labour could bring. This suggests that reeves perceived the efficiency of customary labour in this task to be roughly 50–60 per cent of that of hired labour. With such a considerable margin, the wider use of customary labour in important tasks such as weeding, land drainage, and, from 1344 onwards, muck-spreading may well have helped to depress yields. After all, it was the more extensive use of labour services for mowing that appears to have caused the dramatic fall in the yield of hay at Wisbech after the Black Death.37 However, the fall in arable yields after the Black Death cannot have been brought about by the use of labour services alone. Even though more customary labour was used after the Black Death, it by no means eclipsed the employment of stipendiary famuli and casual hired labour; indeed, in the early 1350s hired labour formed approximately one-fifth of the harvest workforce (and probably more with famuli involvement), two-thirds of the ploughing workforce, and nine out of ten weeders. Moreover, arable yields did not remain at this low level, even though a similar amount of customary labour was used in later decades. In fact, labour quality did not simply vary from one form of labour to another, but probably 36

Stone, ‘Productivity of Hired and Customary Labour’.

37

Ibid.

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changed over time as well; in particular, it seems to have declined substantially in the immediate aftermath of the Black Death. For example, the efficiency of harvest labour fell by approximately onethird in these years: in five harvests between 1341 and 1348, each harvest worker reaped and bound an average of 7.2 bushels per day; but in five harvests between 1349 and 1353, the work rate had fallen to 4.8 bushels per man-day. It is reasonable to assume that labour services were performed more grudgingly after the Black Death, yet the efficiency of hired labour seems to have fallen to an even greater extent. As we have seen, farm officials chose to use customary rather than hired labour for making water channels when the cost of the latter increased from 21=2 d. to 3d. per furlong in 1350. However, this was not the first time that this wage level had been reached, for land drainage had also cost 3d. per furlong in the 1330s. Yet, at that time hired labour had been preferred, presumably because it was considered to be more than twice as productive as customary labour at that point. The productivity of hired labour seems to have fallen in both absolute and relative terms between the 1330s and the 1350s. Comparison of trends in levels of pay suggests that, of all hired workers, the famuli may have had the least incentive to labour assiduously in the years directly after the Black Death. In 1347–8 the annual stipend for a ploughman at Wisbech was 7s. plus 5.2 quarters of mixed grain; taking the value of this grain into account, the ploughman’s total stipend that year was effectively just over 33s. In the next two accounting years, that is 1348/9 (when plague struck) and 1349/50, the total pay for a ploughman fell to less than 25s. Relative to the rising wages of casual hired labourers, the fall must have seemed even steeper.38 The total value of a ploughman’s stipend recovered in 1350/1 and 1352/3 to 33–4s., but even so this was only marginally superior to their level of pay in 1347/8 and was still lower, in fact, than in 1340/1. In these circumstances it must have proved virtually impossible to secure efficient and hard-working famuli; indeed, it seems likely that the famuli, whose labour formed the backbone of the demesne economy, would have worked considerably less hard than they had before the Black Death. It is not easy to translate this directly into arable yields, although useful comparisons can be drawn here with the management and productivity 38

For example, the wage for mowing an acre of beans at Wisbech increased from 3d. per acre in 1348 to over 8d. per acre in the following two years.


105

of sheep at Wisbech. Shepherds, who were employed on a similar basis to ploughmen and other famuli, played a crucial role in maintaining the health and welfare of their flocks, often simply by observing the behaviour of the sheep and acting swiftly and appropriately if need be. The attentiveness and skill of the shepherd could in fact have a significant impact on mortality rates in the first few months after lambing. Consequently, lamb mortality between birth and the end of the accounting year can provide some indication of the effectiveness of shepherds.39 At Wisbech the death rate among lambs averaged 2.7 per cent in the 1330s and 1340s; however, this rose above 10 per cent in three out of four years in the early 1350s, peaking at almost 40 per cent in 1350 and 1352. In this case at least, the quality of the famuli seems very much to blame. None of these are a perfect measure of change over time in labour efficiency. But each points in pretty much the same direction, and cumulatively they suggest that labour quality was a significant problem in the immediate aftermath of the Black Death. Indeed, life cannot have been easy for reeves, who had to find and motivate the labour force, which may well explain why there was a considerable degree of managerial instability at Wisbech at this time. Before the arrival of plague, reeves often remained in office for several years. However, in the six years between September 1348 and September 1354 there were five different reeves. Such short terms of office do not seem to have been caused by untimely deaths: these reeves were all in post for complete years, and Adam Dumpisday held the post during and after the passage of the Black Death, from September 1348 to September 1350. Nor were they poor decision-makers and therefore unable to hold on to the job. Instead, the rapid turnover of reeves is probably an expression of the difficulties that they faced in the wake of the plague.40 The 1360s and 1370s By the 1360s and the early 1370s, the labour situation at Wisbech had improved somewhat. This is not to say that the labour force 39 For a more detailed explanation, see Stone, ‘Productivity and Management’, 17–20. 40 In fact, in June 1353 John Trowan, who was then reeve, appeared in court, ‘charged with demonstrating how he wished to be exempt from office’: Parkin, ‘Courts and the Community’, 135. Managerial difficulties were doubtless compounded in 1350 when a prisoner at Wisbech Castle ‘assaulted the bishop’s bailiffs, threatened the constable and besieged the castle’: Pugh (ed.), VCH Cambridge, iv. 252.

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was as effective as it had been before the Black Death, but simply that the outlook was not so bleak: the harvesting rate was now 16 per cent lower than it had been in the years 1341–8, rather than 33 per cent lower as it had been in the immediate aftermath of the plague; the mortality rate of lambs averaged 13.4 per cent between 1363 and 1373, which was lower than in the 1350s but still higher than in the 1330s and 1340s; moreover, just two reeves held office during the 1360s and 1370s, for five and twelve years respectively. As we have seen, crop yields were considerably better in the mid1360s than they had been in the early 1350s, although yields of the three largest crops—oats, mixtill, and wheat—were still lower than they had been on the eve of the Black Death. Labour efficiency may well have played a part in this, although the level of yields in the 1360s and 1370s was probably more the result of deliberate choice. As we saw in the last chapter, the maintenance of profit relies not only on the generation of income but also on the assessment and adjustment of costs and inputs; in this respect, too, decision-making was central to the success of the farm at this time. First, there are signs that pasturing arrangements were less carefully integrated with arable cultivation by this time: animal numbers were fairly high throughout the 1360s (at an average of 111.2 units) but the extra manure did not necessarily reach the arable land. At least one field was set aside as permanent pasture.41 Moreover, as in the 1330s, demesne livestock were often grazed on Wisbech High Fen, the area of marshland several miles to the west of the demesne farm. In 1350 livestock were rowed to this marsh in four boats, and ten men were hired to construct a fold there.42 Thereafter, the accounts frequently record the presence of stock on the marsh: swine were pastured there in 1351, 1366, and in the summer of 1367; while references to sheep being rowed to and from the fen abound in the mid-1360s. Pasturing stock here must have incurred a net removal of nitrogen from the farm, as indeed did grazing sheep on other Ely lands in this region, as when ewes were grazed at Terrington in 1363, and when yearlings were pastured at Coldham in 1370. Deliberately allowing valuable manure to be 41 Calfcroft had been sown on five occasions between 1338 and 1350, but does not seem to have been sown since then; in 1369, 42s. 8d. was invested in digging 124 perches of new ditch around Calfcroft and in hiring a carpenter to make a gate for the field, specifically so that it could be used as pasture for the lord’s animals. 42 A pig-house was also built in ‘Le Fen’ in this year.


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taken away from the farm may seem odd, but it in fact reveals the extent to which profit-seeking not yield-maximizing was at the forefront of the minds of demesne officials. Grazing the lord’s animals elsewhere enabled portions of demesne pasture to be leased out instead, with receipts from leasing herbage often exceeding £6 per annum during the 1360s. Reeves, it would seem, felt that the revenue from leasing demesne herbage outweighed any potential gains to be made from the application of more manure or from pasturing the lord’s animals on this richer grassland.43 Secondly, there was a distinct shift in the attitude towards leguminous crops. As the evidence for the pre-Black Death period revealed, medieval farmers were perfectly aware of the beneficial effect of sowing beans, peas, and vetches. Yet in the 1360s and early 1370s legumes were gradually sown less widely: their share of sown acreage fell to 4.0–4.8 per cent in 1362–3, 3.6 per cent in 1365, 2.8–2.9 per cent in 1368–9, 1.4–1.7 per cent in 1370–1, with none at all being sown in 1372 and 1373. The position that legumes occupied in the cropping sequence also changed significantly: rather than being planted immediately prior to a winter-sown crop, they were generally now sown in the spring phase of a winter–spring–fallow rotation. This is not to say that productive use was no longer made of the nitrogen that was fixed in the soil at this time. Certain fields were still targeted for legume cultivation in conjunction with the growing of cash crops, and the sowing of legumes prior to the fallow presumably aided the growth of grass in these fields to the benefit of the livestock. Nevertheless, the direct nitrogenous benefit that had been derived by winter-sown crops from the sowing of legumes before and immediately after the Black Death was now considerably reduced.44 These changes in the use of legumes were entirely deliberate, probably induced chiefly by the rising cost of labour, which made it increasingly expensive to prepare land and then sow, weed, and harvest a crop of legumes. Historians tend to characterize the Indian summer for demesne farming as a period in which high prices consistently offset any increase in wages. However, the balance 43 Occasionally, though, some of the demesne pasture was used for the lord’s animals, as in the winter of 1371–2, when the lord’s sheep were grazed at Smalemedwe. Notably, these instances occur at times of high wool prices. 44 For an examination of how nitrogen residues in the soil declined during the first year after a leguminous crop, see Chorley, ‘Agricultural Revolution’.

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between the two shifted considerably over time; in particular, wages rose to a much greater extent than prices following further outbreaks of plague during the 1360s. At Wisbech reapers and binders could be hired in 1362 for less than 31=2 d. per day, but this had risen to 41=2 d. per day by 1369. Similarly, a stacker could be secured for the whole of harvest for between 5s. and 6s. 8d. between 1362 and 1366, but seems to have demanded 10s. in 1367, and was thereafter paid by the day (at 41=2 d. per day in 1369 and 5d. per day in 1370–1). By comparison, while the price of wheat increased by 18 per cent between 1363–6 and 1369–72, the price of bere rose by only 6 per cent, while the price of mixtill—the crop that derived most benefit from the sowing of legumes—fell by 7 per cent. Nor were these trends peculiar to Wisbech. According to Farmer’s national series of prices and wages, the price of wheat increased by 3 per cent between 1356–60 and 1365–9, but the daily wage for reaping and binding corn rose by fully 26 per cent.45 The Indian summer for demesne farming clearly had its cold snaps. Farm managers at Wisbech must increasingly have considered investment in soil nitrogen to be an unjustifiable expense. Legumes were instead grown more and more as just a fodder crop. In fact, the acreage devoted to the crop in these years seems to have been dependent chiefly on fodder requirements. The gradual decline in the amount of legumes sown matches the pattern of consumption: while legumes were regularly fed to lambs, pigs, and occasionally calves and mares until 1368, they were only given to lambs thereafter. Moreover, it is possible to trace a causal link between the yield (net of tithe and seed) and the sown acreage of legumes at this time. When the supply of legumes appears to have been insufficient, as in the harvests of 1362 and 1364, a few more acres were sown in the following year. Likewise, the acreage under legumes was reduced after the relatively abundant harvests of 1363, 1365, 1367, and 1369. By the early 1370s, however, it seems to have been thought cheaper and less troublesome to import legumes from elsewhere rather than cultivate them on the farm itself.46 This decision may well have been prompted by the change from generally plentiful yields of beans and peas in the mid-1360s to volatile yields thereafter, sometimes with very low net returns, as in 1370. 45

Farmer, ‘Prices and Wages, 1350–1500’, 502, 516. In 1373, for example, 5 quarters of legumes were received from the reeve of Walton for this purpose. 46


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It was presumably the changing balance between wages and prices which also prompted farm officials to reduce labour inputs in weeding during the 1360s and 1370s. Wages for this task plainly rose significantly in these years, from just under 13=4 d. per day in 1353 to at least 21=2 d. per day in the early 1370s.47 As Table 4.4 shows, labour inputs dropped sharply at about the same time, often to between 40 and 76 man-days per 100 sown acres, which was well below the level of the early fourteenth century. Cost-cutting sometimes took the form of reducing the overall intensity of weeding, when all crops were weeded but by fewer hands. Alternatively, labour inputs were sometimes concentrated on certain crops, as when the reeve noted in 1362 that 64 acres of land were not weeded ‘because it was not necessary’. As with the sowing of legumes, grain prices no longer had any effect on year-to-year changes in weeding inputs; even following years of high grain prices labour inputs remained low. In essence, managerial attitudes towards this yield-raising technique had changed. In fact, during the 1360s and 1370s the level of weeding inputs only increased at times when weed growth seems to have been particularly dense. In 1367, for example, the reeve noted that extra labour was hired for dealing with an unusually high number of thistles, while an infestation of darnel in the previous year required a similarly concentrated effort.48 The use of agricultural techniques may have been declining, but farm managers did not become inattentive to their economic environment. In fact, as the changing balance between hired and customary labour in weeding shows, they were extremely flexible in deciding upon the exact composition of the workforce from year to year. In arriving at this decision, officials appear to have relied largely on the comparative cost per acre of the different forms of labour. Customary labourers usually worked at a rate of about four labour services per acre, thus effectively costing the lord 2d. per acre in uncollected commutation dues. During the 1360s and 1370s labour 47 In the account for 1371, the reeve originally recorded the wage for weeders as 3d. per day but this was crossed out by the auditors and replaced by 21=2 d. per day. 48 Darnel is not listed as one of the more frequently mentioned medieval weeds in Postles, ‘Cleaning the Medieval Arable’, 143. However, though rare now, it seems to have been fairly common in pre-industrial England. Indeed, in Henry V (written in the late 16th century), Shakespeare referred to ‘her fallow leas j The darnel, hemlock and rank fumitory j Doth root upon’, which suggests that it was sufficiently common for the reference not to be lost on his audience: Shakespeare, Complete Works, 498. I am grateful to Christine Carpenter for this reference.

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Table 4.4. Labour inputs in weeding at Wisbech Barton, 1349–1375 Year

Expenditure (s)

Labour servicesa

Man-days per 100 acres sown

% corn weeded

1349 1350 1351 1352 1353 1362 1363 1364 1365 1366 1367 1368 1369 1370 1371 1372 1373

21.5 76.1 98.0 105.9 97.8 21.3 21.7 26.3 12.0 15.3 51.1 20.0 21.3 1.7 20.8 23.0 35.2

0 154 154 154 154 0 154 0 154 154 0 103 154 527 154 154 149

90 142–220 160–251 182 230 46–76 66–92 40–67 57 54–71 79–132 53–76 62–85 91 63 75 113

84 100 100 100 100 76 62 100 — 43 100 60 100 100 — — —

Notes: Daily wage is assumed to be 1d. per day in 1349 (as in the period 1314–48), and recorded as 2.17d. in 1352, 1.71d. in 1353, 1.48d. in 1365, 21=2 d. in 1370, 21=2 d. (3d.) in 1371, 2.07d. (21=2 d.) in 1372, and 2d. (21=2 d.) in 1373. In other years, labour inputs have been calculated for a wage range of 11=2 d.–21=2 d. per day. The wages in parentheses were originally recorded by the reeve but were subsequently crossed out and replaced. The gap in the sequence of years is caused by a series of missing account rolls. a

Labour services were of half a day’s duration.


services were commuted entirely for cash only when the cost of hiring labour fell below 2d. per acre, as in 1362, 1364, and 1367. But farm officials would also have needed to take into account the relative productivity of hired and customary labour, and weeding therefore provides us with two further insights into long-term changes in the attitudes of the workforce. In the decades before the Black Death hired labour in weeding had usually cost 1–11=2 d. per acre and was thus used in preference to customary labour. But even when the cost of hiring labour rose to 2.4d. and 2.7d. per acre in 1332 and 1333, the option of enforcing labour services was still ignored. This again suggests that the work rate of hired labourers in


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the 1360s and 1370s was lower than it had been thirty or forty years earlier, bearing out the complaints of contemporary writers such as Gower and Langland.49 Secondly, customary labour was used more extensively for weeding in 1370, the year in which recorded wages for hired weeders reached 21=2 d. per day for the first time, the specific labour services in this task being supplemented from general ‘winter and summer works’. Notably, though, this experiment was not repeated in 1371, despite wages remaining at a very high level, which suggests that even at this time there was still a significant difference between the efficiency of hired and customary labour. As in the 1330s and early 1340s, keeping profits high by cutting expenditure on yield-raising techniques also entailed reducing the physical productivity of the land. The factor that seems to have been of most significance in depressing yields at this time was the reduction of labour inputs in weeding. Figure 4.2 shows the yield ratios of wheat and oats between 1338 and 1372 together with the estimated number of man-days spent weeding each 100 acres of land. Three phases stand out in particular: first, the decade before the Black Death, when a steady decline in weeding inputs was closely shadowed by falling yields; secondly, the immediate aftermath of the plague, when despite high inputs yields appear to have been held back by low labour efficiency; and thirdly, the 1360s and 1370s, when very low inputs in weeding were matched by equally low yields. In fact, the reduction in weeding inputs may also have contributed to the divergence in yields of wheat and mixtill in the late 1360s and early 1370s. The different soil types in the Wisbech region—ranging from light silts near the sea, to heavier silt–clays further inland—have varying characteristics in terms of arable cultivation, but the main difference between them is that light silt is prone to carry an exceptionally heavy weed flora.50 With less attention given to weeding in the 1360s and 1370s, the yields of crops grown on the light silt soils of the demesne may well have suffered to a greater extent than those of crops sown on the more weed-resistant soils further west. Judging by the information given in Map 2.2 and Table 4.3, some of the fields that held an increasing amount of wheat and less mixtill, such as Lythesmedwe, were characterized by light silt, whereas some of those which held more 49 50

Gower, Major Latin Works, 209; Langland, Piers Plowman, 67. Wright and Ward, Survey of the Soils and Fruit, 17–21.


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Yield ratio (bushels per bushel sown)

10

Wheat Oats Weeding

9

200

8 7

150

6 5 100 4 3 50

2 1

Weeding inputs (man-days per 100 acres sown)

250

11

0 1372

1370

1368

1366

1364

1362

1360

1358

1356

1354

1352

1350

1348

1346

1344

1342

1340

1338

0

Fig. 4.2. Yield ratios of wheat and oats and estimated inputs in weeding at Wisbech Barton, 1338–1372. Source: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8.

mixtill at the expense of wheat, including Fenlond and Cotecroft, were on heavier soil. Tracking movements in inputs and yields in this period is, however, complicated by one or two exceptions to the general trends. For example, there seems to have been an increase in the amount of fallow ploughing done after the Black Death, all of which was done by customary labour.51 This may simply have been a response to planting more wheat, for the two seem to go hand in hand, or was perhaps seen as a cheaper alternative to weeding. Either way, it might help to explain why the fall in wheat yields was less pronounced than the drop in weeding inputs. Similarly, while muck-spreading by hand appears to have been carried out in a lacklustre fashion in the immediate aftermath of the Black Death, by the 1360s and 1370s farmyard manure seems to have been collected and applied with 51 During the period 1349–72 an average of just over 350 plough-days per annum was spent fallow ploughing.


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considerably more care. Indeed, between 1362 and 1372 a mean of 1,512 measures of muck were spread each year, compared to 1,308 per year between 1338 and 1348, therefore almost matching the increase in animal numbers.52 This unusual degree of consistency over time in the use of techniques probably stemmed from the fact that only customary labour was used for muck-spreading after the Black Death; rather than having to hire labourers to spread the extra muck, the reeves simply deployed a few more labour services.53 Not all crops, though, derived benefit from the muck that was spread. Correlating yields per acre with stocking densities suggests that—as in the early fourteenth century—manuring had most impact on bere, which was the most commercialized yet least extensively grown of the winter-sown cereals.54 Bere yields correlate most strongly with the stocking density of horses, which is also the only source of manure to have had any effect on mixtill yields. This may well explain why the yields of bere and mixtill fell to a lesser extent at that time than those of wheat and oats.

Livestock Husbandry It was suggested in the last chapter that reeves at Wisbech had a clear conception of the numbers of livestock that should ideally be kept on the demesne. These aims essentially remained the same after the Black Death: five or six working horses; thirty to thirty-five oxen, capable of pulling four ploughs;55 a flock of 550–600 sheep, 52 In the years 1338–48, 17 measures of muck were spread per livestock unit; by the early 1350s this had dropped to 11 measures; but between 1362 and 1372 the rate had increased again to 15 measures per livestock unit. The slight decline between 1338–48 and 1362–72 is perhaps attributable to the grazing arrangements described above. 53 Customary labour was normally used at a rate of 33 measures of muck per labour service, but in the 1360s, when manure was abundant, farm officials appear to have tried to force customary labourers to spread 50 or more measures of muck each. This policy was soon dropped, however, seemingly after the workers performed these services in a particularly grudging manner in 1368 and 1369 (by spreading fewer than 15 measures of muck per work). For further evidence of the reorganization of labour services at this time, see Stone, ‘Productivity of Hired and Customary Labour’, 653. 54 The correlation coefficients for bere yields per acre and stocking densities per 100 acres sown with bere are: horses 0.739, cattle 0.527, sheep 0.563, and livestock in total 0.568. All coefficients are significant at a 10 per cent level of probability. 55 When a fifth plough was brought into use between 1352 and 1363, the oxen herd was expanded to about forty.

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composed chiefly of ewes, yearling ewes, and lambs; and a herd of fifty to sixty pigs. However, the reeves were now working in a very different world, and it is no surprise to find that the means by which they maintained these numbers and the problems that they faced in doing so had changed accordingly. Having previously relied on male horses, the Wisbech reeves opted after the Black Death to use mares for ploughing, harrowing, and carting. Their main aim in doing this was presumably to reduce costs by maintaining horse numbers through breeding rather than purchase. In fact, over £24 had been spent on buying horses before the plague, but in the period 1349–75 this was cut to less than £2. At face value this saved about 26s. a year, although there must have been some drawbacks with which to contend. Numbers of working stock could no longer be boosted immediately, since it took approximately three years for foals to mature into adult horses. Nor was there a guaranteed supply: normally one or two foals were born each year, but in 1366 the reeve commented that six mares produced only two foals because the rest did not become pregnant, while in other years mares did not give birth at all. There must also have been hidden expenses in managing the herd for reproduction, but even so it seems unlikely that these would have exceeded the margin in purchase costs. Indeed, the farm did not even have to maintain its own stallion: in 1353, when the mares were found to be barren, a stallion was borrowed for ten days at a total cost of 4s. 1d. Similar changes were made to the ways in which numbers of other livestock were maintained. For instance, nearby Ely manors were sometimes used to supply Wisbech with young cattle. Beaudesert, for instance, which had earlier specialized in wool production, now appears to have bred cattle instead and transferred them to Wisbech; once they had matured, the oxen remained at Wisbech but cows and bulls were returned to Beaudesert in order to restock the breeding pool there. Similarly, in the late 1360s and 1370s the sheep flock became increasingly self-sufficient. A total of 1,807 sheep were either bought or sent from other Ely manors in eight years during the period 1349–64, but in the next ten years this had decreased to just 102.56 Natural increase was also the main method of replacing 56 It seems that these purchases were increasingly made locally. For example, of 313 lambs bought in the third quarter of the fourteenth century, almost two-thirds came in relatively small quantities from named buyers, who were presumably local tenants.


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pigs at this time. Indeed, the auditors of the accounts paid a great deal of attention to monitoring the reproductive performance of sows, to the extent that reeves in this period were regularly charged if fewer piglets were produced than they expected.57 By relying to a greater extent on natural increase and by seeking to fill any remaining gaps in their herds and flocks from sources close at hand, reeves reduced the cost of replacing livestock. But at the same time they faced increasing problems in the management of livestock numbers, for the sheep flock and pig herd were severely hampered in this period by outbreaks of murrain. As Figure 4.3 shows, mortality rates for these animals rose steeply in the aftermath of the Black Death. The death rate of sheep reached 26.5 per cent in 1350, 34.4 per cent in 1362, and 22.9 per cent in 1367, while for pigs the late 1360s and early 1370s appear to have been particularly disease-ridden, with death rates of 35.7 per cent in 1366, 32.2 per cent in 1368, and 33.3 per cent in 1370.58 Notably, however, this contrasts sharply with the trend in mortality of horses and oxen, for death rates among horses remained relatively stable while the mean mortality rate for cattle was in fact lower than it had been before the Black Death. This striking variation in mortality trends for livestock at Wisbech probably reflects a different approach to the management of draught and non-draught animals. The former were a necessary part of arable cultivation and it seems that their needs were promoted above those of non-draught animals as the economic environment changed. This manifested itself in two ways. First, as it became more profitable to lease out some of the demesne pasture after the Black Death, it was sheep and pigs that were more likely to be grazed on Wisbech High Fen. This seems to have made them more susceptible both to accidental death and to disease. For instance, thirteen pigs were drowned in 1351, while in the mid-1360s six died ‘in murrain in the marsh’. Pasturing sheep on wet land made them 57 The auditors expected each sow to produce fifteen piglets during the course of the year: for example, in 1365 four sows produced forty-three piglets and there was an oneratio, a debt charged to the reeve, of seventeen piglets. This expectation is similar to that recommended in the anonymous Husbandry of the 13th century, which stated that ‘the sow ought to bear pigs twice a year and at each farrowing she ought to bear at least seven piglets’: Oschinsky (ed.), Walter of Henley, 425. 58 In the case of sheep, rising mortality was reflected by the rising cost of buying medicinal ointments: 9.1d. per year had been spent on tar and salve per 100 sheep in the early 14th century, but expenditure rose to 13.1d. in the aftermath of the plague.


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% of maximum flock/herd in murrain

40 Sheep Swine

35 30 25 20 15 10 5

1374

1370

1366

1362

1358

1354

1350

1346

1342

1338

1334

1330

1326

1322

1318

1314

0

Fig. 4.3. Mortality rates of sheep and swine at Wisbech Barton, 1314–1375. Source: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8.

susceptible to liverfluke, an emaciating disease referred to by contemporaries as sheep rot. Significantly, specific references to this disease at Wisbech only occur in the period after the Black Death: for example, in 1365 ewes were pastured in the marsh for just one month because of fear of rotting, while ten wethers were sold in the following summer because they were rotten and infected. Secondly, the yield of hay from manorial meadows fell drastically when skilled hired mowers were replaced by less skilled customary ones in the aftermath of the Black Death;59 what winter fodder remained was usually reserved for horses and oxen at the expense of sheep,60 a strategy that is bound to have weakened ovine resilience to disease. It was not only mortality rates that were affected by these changes, for the health and productivity of surviving sheep is also likely to have suffered. Information on wool yields at Wisbech in this period is scarce, but it nevertheless indicates that fleece weights plummeted immediately after the Black Death. Compared 59

Stone, ‘Productivity of Hired and Customary Labour’. While the amount of hay given to horses and oxen (per unit of livestock) declined by 28 per cent between 1344 and 1366, the quantity allocated to ewes and lambs fell from nine carts of hay to none at all. 60


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to regular yields of 2.3–2.4 lb per fleece in the early fourteenth century, the mean weight of twenty-four fleeces sold in 1349 was just 1.46 lb, while that of 216 fleeces shipped down to Ely in 1351 was 1.73 lb. By encouraging liverfluke, the change in pasturing arrangements itself probably contributed to the fall in fleece weights, for one of the symptoms of sheep rot mentioned by Houghton in the seventeenth century was that ‘the wooll would drop from their backs of it self’.61 Furthermore, the chronic underfeeding of sheep both reduces the growth and thickness of wool and affects their ability to withstand outbreaks of disease; in his sheep-farming manual of 1837, William Youatt in fact listed ‘bad keep’ and ‘starvation’ at the head of his list of possible causes of sheep scab.62 So while Stephenson was right to diagnose a reduction in levels of nutrition as one of the main factors affecting the health of a flock and the yield of wool after the Black Death, the Wisbech evidence suggests that this was the result of managerial decision-making rather than climatic change. But increased disease was not the only factor that seems to have pushed wool yields down. The wool sale of 1349 suggests that storing fleeces after shearing caused the weight of wool to fall as well, presumably as it dried out. The fleeces sold in that year had been shorn in the previous summer, at which point the reeve noted their total weight as 31=2 stone. Yet by the time they were sold, after being stored for up to fifteen months, the reeve recorded that the clip weighed just 21=2 stone, a fall of nearly 30 per cent. Wool would presumably have been stored in this way only if reeves were unable to find a purchaser at an acceptable price, in the hope that higher prices in the following year would offset any diminution in weight. Whether or not this was a successful policy in 1348–9 is unclear, but local wool prices were plainly depressed at this time for the wool was eventually sold for just 2s. 6d. per stone, which was about half the price that it had fetched in 1327. The Wisbech accounts provide more information about lambing rates during this period. These also suggest a fall in productivity after the Black Death, for the reproduction rate averaged ninetytwo lambs per 100 ewes, and dropped to eighty-one in 1365 and eighty-five in 1367, although it subsequently recovered to a much higher level in the early 1370s. The general decline in lambing 61 62

Quoted in Trow-Smith, History of British Livestock Husbandry, 249. Youatt, Sheep, 537; see also Owen, Sheep Production, 104–5.

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success can partly be explained by a changing ratio of rams to ewes, which increased after the plague to an average of almost forty ewes for every ram. Labour inputs in the post-Black Death era were also lower than had previously been the case, with an average of 219 man-days per 100 ewes in the period 1320–48 but 176 man-days between 1349 and 1375. However, neither of these factors can fully explain the fluctuations and trends in lambing rates, and a more consistent explanation again emerges by looking at the changing health of ewes. Judging by the proportion of ewes described as being too weak to be milked, the health of the Wisbech breeding flock deteriorated considerably after the Black Death: for example, 28 per cent of ewes were too weak for milking in 1349, 20 per cent in 1354, and 15 per cent in 1369. This partly reflects their greater susceptibility to disease, stemming from the lower level of fodder provision. But neither were future ewes particularly well catered for: in the 1350s and 1360s the quantity of oats and legumes given to lambs fell to less than 15 bushels per 100 lambs born, which was approximately as low as it had been in the 1330s. Changing health probably also explains the recovery of lambing rates in the late 1360s and early 1370s. First, less use seems to have been made of Wisbech High Fen for grazing sheep from 1368 onwards. At the same time, expenditure on the central sheep-house at Wisbech increased: after twenty years of silence in the accounts, regular payments were once again made for repairs to the sheephouse. More pasture was also made available on the demesne: over £2 was invested in creating an area of permanent pasture at Calfcroft in 1369, while the account for 1371/2 records that nothing was made from leasing the winter herbage of 30 acres at Smalemedwe because it was depastured by the lord’s sheep. This renewed investment may well have been prompted by a sharp increase in wool prices. According to Farmer’s national price index, the price of a stone of wool was uniformly low between 1350 and 1364, fluctuating between 2s. 7d. and 3s. 5d. per stone. However, between 1367 and 1373 the price rose to between 4s. 6d. and 4s. 11d. in six out of seven years. Unfortunately, there are no hay accounts during the late 1360s and early 1370s, but by the late 1370s, when wool prices were still high, some hay at least was once again being given to sheep. Even more significantly, the strength of the breeding flock was also boosted in the late 1360s and 1370s by a declining interest in the milking of ewes. Milking had a more debilitating effect on ewes than


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the suckling of lambs, since milking often went on beyond the date at which lambs would have been weaned. As Ryder wrote, ‘whereas normal lactation will cease when the lambs are weaned at about five months, milking will extend the lactation period to seven months after birth’.63 Lactation has the effect of delaying the return of the normal cyclical pattern of oestrous behaviour in the ewe through the release of prolactin.64 As Fitzherbert exclaimed in 1523, ‘Howe be it they vse in some places to mylke theyr ewes, whan they haue wayned theyr lambes: but that is great hurte to the ewes, and wyll cause them, that they wyll not take the ramme at the tyme of the year for pouertye, but goo barreyne.’65 Thirteenth-century writers were also concerned about the effects of prolonging lactation,66 but until the mid-1360s ewes at Wisbech were nevertheless milked in almost every year. However, no ewes at all were milked in 1366, 1367, 1370, and 1372. This change in policy may simply have been implemented because the value of lactage had fallen to 2–3d. per ewe after the Black Death (compared to 3–4d. in the early fourteenth century).67 However, with greater onus placed on natural increase as a means of flock replacement from the mid-1360s onwards, it probably also represents an attempt to maximize the breeding potential of the ewes. Either way, the cessation of milking seems to have had a beneficial effect on the health of ewes and, judging by the high reproduction rates of the early 1370s, on lambing success as well.

Conclusion In the broadest terms, the Wisbech evidence supports the notion that the period 1349–75 witnessed an Indian summer for demesne farming, for the agricultural economy here was surprisingly buoyant given the massive fall in population: crop prices were generally higher than in the early fourteenth century; annual receipts from the sale of arable and pastoral produce increased substantially; and gross monetary returns per sown acre exceeded pre-Black Death 63

Ryder, Sheep and Man, 689. Mauleon, ‘Manipulation of the Breeding Cycle’, 443–5. 65 Fitzherbert The Book of Husbandry, 61. 66 See Oschinsky (ed.), Walter of Henley, 286–7, 428–9, 472. 67 If the demesne shepherds did the milking, profit margins would have been further reduced by a rise in their annual stipends from 5s. to 7s. each in the late 1360s. 64

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returns by 7 per cent. However, while ‘Indian summer’ is a useful and memorable metaphor, some of its implications are misleading. First, Wisbech was not immune from economic difficulties during this period: in the years immediately after the Black Death trade was seriously disrupted and there were significant problems with the motivation of the workforce; flooding brought further difficulties, especially in the late 1350s and early 1360s; and wages generally rose to a much greater extent than prices during the 1360s and early 1370s. Secondly, even without these difficulties, the idea of an Indian summer suggests that landlords simply sat back and watched the money roll in, but profits at Wisbech were in fact buoyed up not just by favourable prices but also by the skill of farm officials. Receipts in arable farming were boosted to a significant extent by the appropriate timing of mixtill sales, the introduction of dredge as a regular crop, and the yearly adjustments made to the combination of crops sown: at a time when crop sales brought in approximately £55 a year, these decisions alone might account for at least £15 a year, and could thus make the difference between success and failure. The flexibility and effectiveness with which demesne officials responded to changing market conditions is also apparent in their management of inputs, for in order to achieve a high net income in the 1360s and 1370s it was often necessary to reduce the costs of cultivation as well. In some cases, this involved operational changes, such as substituting customary for hired labour, grazing livestock on marshland rather than demesne herbage, selling wool locally rather than in Ely, and relying on breeding rather than market purchases for maintaining livestock numbers. But in other cases, inputs were simply reduced. By the 1360s fewer legumes were sown, weeding was performed less intensively, and the stall-feeding of sheep and pigs seems to have been discontinued. Thirdly, therefore, this can hardly be characterized as a period in which management strategies were simply used in the same way as they had been in the pre-Black Death era, as the concept of an Indian summer for demesne farming seems to imply. As such, falling yields—whether of corn, hay, or livestock—were often the result of a series of deliberate and rational decisions. The behaviour of agricultural prices may have provided an arena for the continued viability of direct demesne cultivation, but at Wisbech the aftermath of the Black Death also saw crucial managerial changes that clearly distinguish this period from the brighter summer days of the ‘high farming’ era.

5 Responding to Pressure at the Turn of the Fifteenth Century The social and economic tide turned decisively against landlords in a variety of ways in the thirty-five years after 1375. It is impossible to pinpoint a precise moment when serfdom was overthrown and difficult even to track its decline with any accuracy, but by the turn of the fifteenth century the lordship of old was tangibly creaking. Customary tenants were increasingly assertive, as the dwindling away of labour services suggests: while still in evidence on several manors in the 1370s, such services were rarely enforced by the 1410s.1 Likewise, peasants were deserting their holdings in increasing numbers during this period, whether in the late 1370s and 1380s at Martham in Norfolk, in the 1390s at Fornham in Suffolk, or in the first decade of the fifteenth century on the Huntingdonshire manors of Holywell and Warboys.2 Even if the peasants’ revolt of 1381 was not a motor of social change, it is indicative of the mood of the age that serfdom and lordship provided a banner under which the uprising gathered momentum. Developments such as these disrupted the running of many manors, but the income that landlords received from their demesne farms was more fundamentally threatened when rising costs and falling prices signalled the end of the Indian summer for direct demesne cultivation. This was a classic ‘price scissors’ situation. On the one hand, the price of labour continued to rise: between 1349–75 and 1376–1409 wages for reaping and binding corn rose by 16 per cent while those for threshing and winnowing increased by 23 per cent.3 On the other, prices for agricultural produce collapsed. The market 1

Page, End of Villeinage, 60–4, 78–82. Campbell, ‘Field Systems’, 140; Bailey, Marginal Economy?, 232; Razi, ‘Myth of the Immutable English Family’, 35. 3 Farmer, ‘Prices and Wages’, 817; id., ‘Prices and Wages, 1350–1500’, 516–17. 2

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had been remarkably buoyant until 1375, but after a series of relatively good harvests and with a decreasing quantity of coinage in circulation, prices dropped sharply in the second half of the 1370s and thereafter remained at a level that better reflected the fall in population.4 Between 1349–75 and 1376–1409 the price of wheat decreased by 25 per cent and that of barley by 26 per cent.5 Even the price of wool, which had been temporarily inflated in the late 1360s and 1370s by severe outbreaks of sheep murrain, declined when the supply of wool recovered and wool exports decreased, falling by 23 per cent between 1365–80 and 1381–1409.6 As profits from the direct cultivation of demesne land shrank, a growing number of landlords gave up the struggle and sought the haven of rentier farming: the bishop of Lincoln, for example, appears to have stopped cultivating his arable land at Buckden in the late 1370s; Battle Abbey gave up demesne farming in the 1370s and 1380s; at Canterbury Cathedral the priory lands were mainly leased between 1380 and 1410; rentier farming generally prevailed at Durham Priory in the years 1386–1416 and on the estates of the bishopric of Worcester between 1395 and 1408; while at Ramsey Abbey, Westminster Abbey, and on several of the bishop of Winchester’s demesnes, leasing finally won out over direct cultivation in the early fifteenth century.7 Of course, the path to rentier farming was not always as smooth as these examples suggest. Many landlords may at first have considered leasing only as a temporary expedient, ‘until a better world has returned’, as the earl of Warwick’s ten-year lease of his demesne at Lighthorne in 1398 indignantly notes.8 Moreover, some demesnes continued to be directly exploited during this period. But even so, the general trend on the great estates at this time was plainly towards the wholesale leasing of demesnes. The outlook for agriculture may generally have been bleak, but in the area around Wisbech these difficulties were compounded by local problems. Lynn had been one of England’s major ports since the 4

Id., ‘Prices and Wages, 1350–1500’, 439–42; Rigby, English Society, 100–2. Farmer, ‘Prices and Wages’, 791; id., ‘Prices and Wages, 1350–1500’, 502–3. Id., ‘Prices and Wages, 1350–1500’, 512–13; Lloyd, ‘Movement of Wool Prices’, 19–20. 7 Canadine, ‘Bishop of Lincoln’s Residential Manors’, 23; Searle, Lordship and Community, 324–37; Mate, ‘Agrarian Economy after the Black Death’, 354; Lomas, ‘Priory of Durham’, 339–40; Fryde, Peasants and Landlords, 80–2, 137–8; Raftis, Estates of Ramsey Abbey, 281–301; Harvey, Westminster Abbey, 148–51; Page 8 Hilton, English Peasantry, 66. (ed.), Pipe Roll, 1409–10, pp. xx–xxi. 5 6

The Turn of the Fifteenth Century

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twelfth century, but in the later Middle Ages trade progressively moved away from this region; in fact, between 1377 and 1524–5 Lynn lost proportionately more of its population than any other town in England.9 The chronology of these changes is uncertain, yet there are indications that Lynn—in common with other east coast ports—was already running into problems by the early fifteenth century.10 But this was not all, for the weather seems to have been closing in as well. Flooding inevitably presented occasional problems in this low-lying landscape, but for about a dozen years at the turn of the fifteenth century it was unusually common. In 1393–4 the Wisbech accounts record that West Fen was submerged. There was further sea inundation in 1394–5 and 1398–9, the rapidly rising water in December 1398 in fact drowning 373 of the Wisbech sheep. Water levels were extremely high again in 1400–1, drainage sewers overflowed in 1402–3, and land was again inundated in 1404–5 and 1405–6. It was doubtless partly as a result of these problems that arable yields at Wisbech were especially poor at this time;11 the value of land was certainly falling, for while it could be leased for an average of 22d. per acre in the late 1370s, this had dropped to 19d. at the beginning of the fifteenth century, occasionally falling as low as 16d. per acre. Yet under these apparently darkening skies the bishop of Ely and his advisers kept the demesne of Wisbech under direct management.12 At first sight this might seem to have been an indifferent decision. But before concluding that central decision-making was irrevocably befuddled by institutional inertia, we need to press the sources further. After all, there is also evidence that manors on some estates responded with great flexibility to the generally deteriorating economic climate.13 Moreover, the sheer fact that those landlords who 9

Carus-Wilson, ‘Medieval Trade’; Dyer, Decline and Growth, 72–4. Parker, Making of King’s Lynn, 11; Dyer, Decline and Growth, 20. Commercial decline in this area is also suggested by the fact that from 1397 onwards the Wisbech accounts increasingly record the purchase of goods at Ely and at the fairs of Stourbridge, Barnwell, and Reach, rather than at Lynn. 11 Wheat yielded only 5–51=2 bushels per acre on four occasions between 1401 and 1407; bere yielded just 2 bushels an acre in 1406; and the legumes crop failed entirely in 1397 and 1405. 12 The Victoria County History suggests that the demesne was leased for £35 in 1378, that 198 acres were back in hand by 1408, and that this had been reduced to only 15 acres in 1419: Pugh (ed.), VCH Cambridge, iv. 244. This was not the case: 290 acres were sown in 1377/8, 300 acres in 1407/8, and 304 acres in 1418/19. 13 Britnell, ‘Production for the Market’, 386–7; id., ‘Agricultural Technology’, 62–5; Bailey, ‘Prior and Convent of Ely’, 11–16. 10

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took the decision to lease their demesnes were usually able to find suitable lessees suggests that both parties believed that agriculture could still yield some return; otherwise, the former would seldom receive the agreed rent and the latter would make no living. Despite the economic, social, and environmental problems of the age, it seems that profits did not necessarily plunge to unsustainable levels.

The Sale and Consumption of Produce The scale of the problem facing landlords at the end of the fourteenth century is certainly apparent in the Wisbech accounts. Most notably, annual income from the sale of agricultural produce fell from £77 in the period 1349–75 to £43 in the years 1376–1409, a drop of 44 per cent. However, it would be wrong to assume that central officials or Wisbech reeves simply watched helplessly as events unfolded before their eyes. Instead, as economic conditions grew worse, they responded by making a series of significant changes to the way in which the demesne was managed, not least in terms of the disposal of produce. Indeed, the financial performance of the demesne was better than the stark figures for income suggest and not nearly as bad as it might otherwise have been. The rapid decline in arable cash receipts was exaggerated by a perceptible shift away from production for the market towards production for consumption. Almost as soon as grain prices collapsed, the purpose of arable cultivation at Wisbech was redefined. Most notably, wheat was increasingly used on the estate rather than being sold at market, a strategic change acknowledged by the Wisbech reeve in September 1396 when he explained to the inquisitive auditors that the wheat sold in the previous month fetched only 5s. 6d. a quarter ‘because it was reserved for the lord’s household until that time’. Overall, after deducting tithe, the proportion of wheat that was sold fell from 55 per cent in the years 1349–75 to just 28 per cent in the period 1376–1409. In practice, this meant that approximately 30 quarters of wheat were now being transferred elsewhere on the estate each year—241=2 quarters for the use of the lord’s household and, from 1397 onwards, a regular parcel of 51=4 quarters to the manor of Waldersey—compared to 11 quarters in the third quarter of the fourteenth century; this difference of 19 quarters was worth over £5 a year. Other crops followed


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a similar pattern. A higher proportion of mixtill was set aside to feed the manorial workforce: 46 per cent in this period rather than 30 per cent in the third quarter of the fourteenth century. Indeed, legumes were sown almost exclusively as a fodder crop during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, accounting for 63 per cent of available legumes compared to just 23 per cent in the period 1349–75. Even the production of oats at this time became proportionately more oriented towards consumption than had previously been the case. Clearly, the performance of the demesne at this time cannot be judged by market income alone. The response of the Wisbech reeves to changing economic conditions was swift and decisive. In 1372–3, 21 per cent of mixtill was used as food on the manor, but this had already increased to 47 per cent ten years later. There were several advantages to consuming a greater proportion of corn at such times. The most obvious was that produce was simply harder to sell in a depressed market. This is indicated in the Wisbech accounts by the growing proportion of grain that reeves were having to give away to buyers in avantagium, a bonus on top of the sale. Nothing was given in avantagium on wheat sales in the 1360s, but the proportion rose to 0.7 per cent of wheat sold in the 1370s, 2.8 per cent in the 1390s, 3.7 per cent in the 1400s, and 4.7 per cent in the 1410s.14 Not only does this suggest that sales were becoming more difficult to secure, but of course the penalty for marketing at all was becoming steeper and steeper: in 1394, for example, 4 quarters of wheat worth nearly 15s. were given in avantagium, a sizeable chunk of the annual profit. Notably, the bonus on wheat sales was particularly high in 1383 and 1394, at 4.7–5.0 per cent of grain sold, and it was between these dates that the dramatic change in the pattern of wheat disposal took place. So while the reduction in the proportion of mixtill sold was a quick response to the initial fall in prices, the changing use to which the available wheat was put was probably a direct response to the growing difficulties of marketing grain. The cost of transporting each quarter of corn to market and paying the reeve and others to carry out these transactions also became proportionately greater when grain prices fell. Indeed, increasing references from 1395 to grain sold in patria, literally ‘in 14

Only years in which a total of over 20 quarters of wheat were sold have been included in this calculation.

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the neighbourhood’, and, from time to time, the naming of buyers suggests that, when corn was sold, reeves also attempted to reduce costs by selling it locally through informal channels. In 1394/5, for example, 40 quarters of wheat and 50 quarters of mixtill were carted up the coast to Tydd Gote to sell, while in the following year 61=2 quarters of mixtill were sold to William atte Hyrne and John Swon, 52 quarters of bere to William atte Hyrne, John Drenstere, and John Clark, and 231=2 quarters of dredge to Roger Hamcoteg and Richard Everard. Prior to 1376 arable sales had formed more than three-quarters of total agricultural income at Wisbech, but from 1376 to 1409 the contribution of arable farming fell to less than half. This changing balance was not simply the result of a rapid decline in arable receipts, but also reflects a conscious change in policy, for in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries pastoral husbandry at Wisbech was increasingly geared towards the market. In particular, income from sheep-farming increased from £14 per annum (15 per cent of total farm receipts) in the years 1314–75 to £16 4s. (37.5 per cent) from then until 1409. This was not due to an expansion in either wool production or ewe-dairying; indeed, mean annual receipts from the sale of wool decreased from £9 5s. to £7 over this period, while those from leasing ewes for lactage fell from £2 to nothing at all. Instead, the rise in income was primarily achieved through sales of livestock: mean annual receipts from selling sheep increased from £2 4s. in the period 1314–75 to £8 in the years 1376–1409.15 The accounts reveal that this was due to yearling sheep being sold at market from 1397 onwards rather than being transferred to other manors on the bishop of Ely’s estate: until 1396, 51 per cent of yearlings were transferred and 2 per cent were sold, but from 1397 to 1409 only 4 per cent were transferred and 52 per cent were sold. Disruption to the existing system of managing the estate flock on an inter-manorial basis can be traced back to the early 1390s, for transferrals of sheep from Wisbech did not proceed at that time with the same fluency as they had in previous decades: indeed, in the years 1393–6 Wisbech-bred sheep were sent to five different manors. This hiatus was clearly precipitated by changes in the market for wool, for—with the exception of the year of the 15

For a similar trend on the Suffolk manor of Lakenheath, see Bailey, ‘Prior and Convent of Ely’, 12–13.


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Black Death—national wool prices in 1390–1 were lower than they had been for 137 years.16 However, the decision to sell these animals was a response to another development. Market demand for sheep in the Wisbech area plainly increased during the 1390s, presumably as peasants started to become more involved in sheep-farming and the consumption of mutton became more widespread, for the sale price of Wisbech yearlings improved markedly at this time, rising from 12d. per head in 1383 and 1394 to 18–24d. per head in the years 1397– 1406. The response to market stimuli in the management of livestock was just as swift as it was in the arable sector. Similar developments can be charted in the marketing of pigs and oxen. Adult pigs were increasingly sold at this time rather than being supplied to the lord’s house and virtually all oxen at the end of their working lives were now disposed of at market. Changes such as these are certainly indicative of the economic responsiveness that generally characterized medieval demesne agriculture and reveal that retaining a demesne farm in hand during this period was not simply a matter of moving relentlessly towards consumption. However, while these adjustments to the disposal of grain and livestock altered the balance of the bishop’s receipts in cash and kind, the total value of the produce generated by the Wisbech demesne would not have changed fundamentally as a result. Costs would certainly have been trimmed, but whether produce was consumed or sold did not change its inherent value. In fact, continued seigneurial involvement in demesne agriculture at this difficult time was much more reliant on the production decisions that were made from day to day and year to year, and it is to these that we now turn.

Cereal-Cropping Strategies Demand for better-quality bread bolstered the production of wheat at the expense of cheaper bread grains in many areas of the country in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries,17 and this tendency is neatly encapsulated by the experience of Wisbech between the late 1370s and 1409. Although the gap between mixtill and 16 Farmer, ‘Prices and Wages’, 808–10; id., ‘Prices and Wages, 1350–1500’, 512–13. Norwich Cathedral Priory also reorganized its estate flock in 1392–3: Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 236. 17 Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 240, 243.

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wheat in the winter cropping schedule had begun to narrow during the 1360s, the former re-established its dominant position in the decade that followed, so that by the late 1370s, 23 per cent of the total sown acreage was devoted to mixtill while wheat occupied just 10 per cent; at this point even bere, with 7 per cent of the cropped acreage, was vying with wheat for second place in the winter sowing season. But during the next thirty years all this changed: by 1407–9, 26 per cent of the cropped acreage was given over to wheat, while the proportion of land sown with mixtill and bere had slipped to 20 per cent and 5 per cent respectively. Wheat was now consistently being sown over a larger area of the demesne than mixtill, and sometimes even mixtill and bere put together, which had only rarely been the case since the 1310s. Wisbech reeves, as we have seen, generally displayed a great awareness of changing patterns of demand, and this period was no exception. Nor was the changing economy the only form of pressure on farm managers at this time, for as patterns of sale and consumption changed, so the number of factors that they needed to take into account increased. During the late 1370s and 1380s, when wheat and mixtill were still grown primarily for sale, changes in absolute market price—and, when appropriate, harvest success— remained the major determinant of fluctuations in their sown acreage, just as in the late 1360s and early 1370s.18 But strategies that had been appropriate for the production of largely marketoriented crops were now less suitable. The Wisbech reeves acted very quickly to refine their cropping strategies in light of this. A clue to the new sowing strategy adopted for wheat and mixtill is found in their combined sown acreage, which from the 1380s onwards settled into a consistent pattern of between 120 and 149 acres. This level of cropping had previously only occurred in one year in three, but from 1383 until 1409, 120–49 acres of wheat and mixtill were sown in fifteen out of eighteen years.19 This unusual consistency suggests that officials at this time aimed first to 18 For example, as the selling price of a quarter of wheat moved from 5.1s. in 1377 to 4.3s. in 1378 and 6.2s. in 1383, so the acreage sown with wheat varied from 30 to 28 to 57 acres; the particularly marked expansion in wheat cultivation between 1378 and 1383 appears to have been prompted by a convergence in the yield trends of wheat and mixtill, which had differed widely during the preceding decade. 19 Only in the accounting years 1402/3, 1403/4, and 1405/6 did the acreage fall below this range, though as this coincided with the tail end of the period of unusually wet weather it may well have been the case that farm managers were forced to sow less winter corn, replacing it with hardier spring-sown crops such as oats.


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satisfy the grain needs of manor and estate. But once this requirement had been met any surplus grain was usually sold; indeed, though consumption of both crops was now to the fore, sales of wheat and mixtill still provided a significant income, exceeding even that produced by the pure cash crops bere and dredge.20 Consequently, a second aim of the cropping strategy for wheat and mixtill was to establish from which crop it was more profitable to produce a marketable surplus. The relative values of these crops had certainly played a part in decision-making up to this point, but this sophisticated approach to formulating a cropping strategy was now adopted consistently and with precision: during the period 1393–1406, as Figure 5.1 shows, the relative sown acreage of wheat and mixtill clearly tracked the fluctuation in their relative price in the preceding year.21 Nor were yields overlooked, for it is notable that the very high relative acreage of mixtill in 1399 and 1402 came after a series of comparatively plentiful mixtill harvests in the years 1398–1401. The Wisbech reeves needed to think fast during this period, and seem to have responded to each new development adroitly and judiciously. In fact, after a run of extremely low mixtill prices in the years 1404–6, the sowing strategy for these crops was adjusted once again. The low price of mixtill at that time encouraged the reeve to purchase some mixtill, rather than produce it all on the farm, thereby allowing more wheat to be sown. Consequently, the acreage sown with mixtill now became entirely dependent on the extent of wheat cultivation: when wheat acreage was reduced between 1407 and 1408, in line with prices, the acreage under mixtill rose, and vice versa between 1408 and 1409. Similar developments can be observed in the sowing strategies for other cereals. The sowing of bere and dredge was closely linked at the turn of the fifteenth century, but rather than simply being grown in competition with one another, as they had been in the 1360s and 1370s, the amount of land allocated to these crops now varied in an almost identical fashion.22 It seems that their acreage was now 20 In the period 1376–1409 market sales of wheat and mixtill brought in a mean of £10 14s. 9d. annually, compared to £8 16s. 61=2 d. for bere and dredge. 21 Despite this clear relationship, the role of annual changes in the absolute price of wheat in determining wheat acreage remained significant. Current market prices for mixtill may well have been unavailable to reeves as it was now grown chiefly for consumption. 22 Correlating the sown acreage of the two crops for the twenty years for which data survive in the period 1376–1409 produces a product moment coefficient of 0.707, which is significant at a 0.1 per cent level of probability.


130 1.6

Sown acreage

Relative values: mixtill/wheat

1.4 1.2 1 0.8 Sale price

0.6 0.4 0.2

1406

1405

1404

1403

1402

1401

1400

1399

1398

1397

1396

1395

1394

1393

0

Fig. 5.1. Sown acreage and mean sale price of mixtill relative to wheat at Wisbech Barton, 1393–1406. Source: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8.

being adjusted with reference to a common external factor; this factor was also price relative to wheat. For example, one of the main adjustments to bere acreage came between 1395 and 1396, when sown acreage was reduced from 20 to 13 acres. The only plausible motive for this decision was a fall in the price of bere relative to that of wheat: the market price for bere was rising at this time, as was the yield per acre of the crop, but its price relative to wheat dropped from 60 per cent in 1395 to 47 per cent in 1396. Reeves needed to be alert to any opportunity for making money in these years, whether this came from sowing a few more acres of bere or dredge or from increasing the surplus of wheat or mixtill; basing all these decisions upon price relative to wheat was new, sophisticated, and characteristically appropriate. Indeed, decision-making in this period seems to have been even tighter than in previous periods. As the last example suggests, the reeves relied on current prices of bere and wheat for determining the acreage sown with bere; when the relative price of bere had last been of significance, in the years immediately after the Black Death, officials at that point relied on prices from the previous accounting year. Tighter control was also exercised over the acreage under oats. Oats


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may have been grown almost exclusively with estate consumption in mind, but in the period 1376–1409 the link between oats acreage and the quantity of oats consumed that year (after deduction of seed) was much stronger than in previous periods: in the nineteen years for which information survives at this time, correlating the proportion of total sown acreage under oats with the number of quarters of oats consumed produces a Spearman rank coefficient of 0.696, which is significant at a 0.1 per cent level of probability. Tight and responsive decision-making is vital to success in difficult economic situations, but so too is the willingness to take risks. Indeed, moderate experimentation with methods of production also became a feature of farm management at Wisbech at the turn of the fifteenth century, especially in terms of the cropping of bere and dredge. Although these crops were generally sown in approximately equal measure, there were several occasions when the balance shifted slightly in favour of one or the other. This divergence usually resulted from experimentation with seeding rates, presumably in order to assess whether it would be more advantageous to cultivate more acres at a lower sowing rate or fewer acres at a higher rate. Both crops were normally sown at 4 bushels an acre, but in 1404/5, for example, 16 acres of bere were sown at 3.13 bushels per acre and 12 acres of dredge at 4.17 bushels per acre; that innovative management lay behind this is suggested by the fact that the same overall quantity of seed was used for each crop.23 Further experimentation occurred in 1405/6, but this time with different types of barley. Twenty-two acres of barley were sown that year, comprising 15 acres of winter-sown bere and 7 acres of spring barley, the only documented occasion that the latter was sown at Wisbech. Perhaps on perceiving winter flood damage to the bere crop, the reeve simply decided to plant some spring barley in order to boost the total harvest. But, if so, why choose an unknown entity rather than a tough and proven crop such as oats? Or perhaps the reeve was simply correcting his earlier conservatism in sowing less bere than its price relative to wheat warranted. Yet, as both bere and spring barley were grown in the same field and together filled the whole field, it seems much more likely that he was deliberately experimenting with different forms of barley. 23

Similarly, in 1389, 24 acres of dredge were sown at the standard rate, but 30 acres of bere were sown at a rate of 3.2 bushels per acre.


132

Acres sown/relative price (wheat = 50)

40

William Waryn

35

John Nevo

Martin Dousing

30 25

Relative sale price

20 15 Sown acreage

10 5

1409

1408

1407

1406

1405

1404

1403

1402

1401

1400

1399

1398

1397

1396

1395

1394

1393

0

Fig. 5.2. Bere: mean sale price relative to wheat and acreage sown at Wisbech Barton, 1393–1409. Source: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8.

The way in which the arable land was utilized, then, suggests not only that farm managers at Wisbech were highly capable but also that the standard of management in this period was even more impressive than in earlier periods. However, some reeves appear to have paid less attention to certain aspects of management than others. As Figure 5.2 shows, the relationship between the acreage sown with bere and its price relative to wheat is consistent for the years 1394–6 and 1405–9, yet the relationship does not hold for the period 1397–1404: despite varying relative (and absolute) prices at that time, the area under bere was held constant at 12–14 acres. These three distinct periods coincide almost exactly with three different manorial reeves: William Waryn, John Nevo, and Martin Dousing.24 John Nevo, it seems, missed out on comparatively 24 Admittedly, the inexact relationship between the sown acreage and relative price of bere in 1404 falls in Dousing’s tenure as reeve, but then he may have considered the very high relative price of bere in that year to be above the ‘expected normal price’: see M. Nerlove, The Dynamics of Supply: Estimation of Farmers’ Response to Prices, Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, ser. lxvi (Baltimore), ii. 82–6 and 210–15, quoted in Biddick with Bijleveld, ‘Agrarian Productivity’, 106. In essence, Nerlove showed that farmers only react to price changes that they expect to be permanent. Notably, John Nevo seems to have forged a link between the sown acreage and relative price of bere in 1403 and 1405.


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lucrative commercial opportunities for he was sowing less bere and—with the acreage under dredge also held at 12–14 acres between 1399 and 1404—less dredge than at any other time during this period.25 Even so, we should hesitate before condemning his reeveship, for as with Robert Black in the 1360s his main concerns may well have lain elsewhere: after all, local flood damage was at its height in these years and must have been both stressful and time-consuming to deal with; furthermore, it is unlikely that he would have been retained as reeve for seven years were he generally ineffectual. The problems facing all reeves during this period are brought into sharp relief by the figures for gross returns per sown acre. Returns in the period 1376–1409 were on average 41 per cent lower than they had been in the third quarter of the fourteenth century and were particularly poor in the first decade of the fifteenth century: prior to this the lowest recorded mean return had been 40d. per acre in 1353, but in five consecutive years between 1402 and 1406 no more than 38d. per acre was realized, dropping as low as 18d. per acre in 1406. Subtracting the cost of cultivation must have reduced the net return on cropping at this time to little more than a shilling per acre, and there would certainly have been a net loss in 1406.26 Yet still the bishop and his council kept the arable land at Wisbech in direct cultivation. Justifying their choice in these years is difficult, but whether this is a matter for blame or simply the result of being unable to find a suitable lessee in such hard times, the land still needed to be managed. Indeed, such tight margins emphasize just how critical it was that reeves in this era made the right decisions about how much land to devote to each crop. In fact, the broad changes that reeves made to the balance of cropping during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries 25 Interestingly, too, only three years in this period do not conform to the otherwise precise strategy for the sowing of oats, all three of which fall within John Nevo’s time as reeve. 26 The calculation of cultivation costs takes into account expenditure on specifically arable tasks—repairs to ploughs and carts, ridging and furrowing, muckcarting, weeding, harvesting, threshing and winnowing, and famuli stipends for ploughmen and carters—together with the value of customary labour services used in arable operations and the value of food and fodder consumed. No account has been taken of expenditure on building repairs or land drainage, though these would have added to the cost of direct cultivation. The cultivation costs for each year during this particularly bad spell were: 1402, 27d. per acre; 1403, 25d. per acre; 1404, 23d. per acre; 1405, 25d. per acre; 1406, 22d. per acre.

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were generally justified. In particular, wheat held its value better than other crops: between 1349–75 and 1376–1409 the average return on an acre of wheat fell by 33 per cent, in contrast to drops of 42 per cent for bere, 46 per cent for dredge, and 53 per cent for mixtill. Indeed, the returns for wheat frequently exceeded those for mixtill during this period and, significantly in terms of generating a steady cashflow, were more stable than those for other crops. Moreover, the close correlation that often existed between year-toyear adjustments in sown acreage and subsequent changes in gross returns per acre suggests that cropping strategies were often effective. Notably, the relationship between wheat acreage and returns was at its most consistent—and considerably better than that of other crops—during John Nevo’s time as reeve. Although he could profitably have sown more bere and dredge at this time, it seems that he concentrated his efforts on formulating cropping strategies for wheat. Unfortunately, though, predicting the direction in which gross returns for each crop moved did not always result in the most profitable use of land. For example, both wheat and mixtill returns increased between the harvests of 1395 and 1396, the former from 43d. to 66d. per acre and the latter from 48d. to 54d. per acre. The expansion of the area under both crops from 1395 to 1396 was thus justified, wheat increasing from 67 to 68 acres and mixtill from 68 to 76 acres. However, because the margin by which these crops expanded in acreage was disproportionate to the increase in their returns, the 1396 cropping schedule was not as profitable as it might have been. Worse still, the combined per acre return on wheat and mixtill sowing in 1396 was actually slightly less than it would have been if the cropping schedule had remained as it was in 1395. Indeed, taking all crops into account, the adjustments that were made to sown acreage between 1395 and 1396 resulted in a notional deficit of nearly 2d. per acre compared to what would have been realized had the cropping schedule of 1395 been implemented again. Incurring notional losses was hardly desirable at the best of times, but as economic conditions grew worse, and every penny in profit or loss mattered all the more, the significance of such a deficit was greatly magnified. In fact, at the turn of the fifteenth century such calculations seem to have become a decisive factor in the assessment—and, if need be, dismissal—of reeves at Wisbech, as Table 5.1 suggests. For example, 1395/6 was the last year of William Waryn’s reeveship. Moreover, in 1402/3, when John Nevo’s


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Table 5.1. A measure of reeves’ cropping success at Wisbech Barton, 1393/4–1409/10 Accounting Reeve Year

1393/4 1395/6 1396/7 1401/2 1402/3 1403/4 1404/5 1405/6 1407/8 1408/9 1409/10

Mean gross returns per acre sown (d.) Actual If cropping had Difference remained unchanged from previous year

William Waryn William Waryn John Nevo John Nevo John Nevo Martin Dousing Martin Dousing Martin Dousing Martin Dousing Martin Dousing Martin Dousing

47.3 47.4 64.3 37.4 38.1 32.1 35.3 29.2 34.5 57.3 31.4

46.7 49.2 65.4 37.2 44.7 32.0 35.0 28.9 35.0 55.0 33.1

þ0.6 1.9 1.1 þ0.3 6.5 þ0.1 þ0.2 0.6 2.5 þ1.6 1.5

Note: The quantity of grain produced is measured net of tithe and seed. The gap in the sequence of years is caused by a series of missing account rolls. Source: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8.

tenure as reeve ended, there was a substantial loss of 61=2 d. per acre from the implementation of the new cropping schedule, while in 1409/10, the last year that Martin Dousing was reeve, there was a deficit of 11=2 d. per acre. Changes to the cropping schedule in most other years brought a slight increase in mean returns, and though there were small deficits in 1396/7 and 1405/6, the losses on these occasions were barely a penny an acre. The only year that goes against this argument is 1407/8, when Martin Dousing remained as reeve despite a notional deficit of 21=2 d. per acre, but as the extent of the loss was due primarily to an unusually large—and plausibly unforeseeable—leap in wheat prices, the reeve may have been excused on this occasion. Otherwise, it seems that the advice given to lords in the Seneschaucy, that ‘those [officials] whom he will find making a loss or not making a profit, ought to answer for their doings and go away’,27 was followed to the letter at this time. The deterioration in economic conditions may well have encouraged 27

Oschinsky (ed.), Walter of Henley, 293.

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reeves at Wisbech to tighten their managerial strategies, but this was not the only form of pressure that was applied to them.

Crop Rotation and Field Management Echoes of this responsive management are found in the way that the fields were exploited. For instance, as soon as grain prices dropped in the 1370s and 1380s, certain fields were rested: part of Smalemedwe lay uncultivated for much of the 1370s (and was described as terra frisca—unused land—when it was leased between 1379 and 1383); Inham was not cropped at all in these decades; and only 30–5 acres of Fourscoreacres were regularly cultivated at that time. Similarly, in the years that followed, the least productive acres appear to have been shed from other fields, such as Cotecroft and Gilberdesdole.28 The imposition of tight managerial control is also indicated by the nature of crop rotations: while the majority of fields—as in previous periods—carried a three-course rotation of winter–spring–fallow at this time, rotation was usually now extremely regular, which must have proved beneficial in terms of the maintenance of soil fertility. At the same time, since reeves needed to maintain a degree of flexibility in order to implement the cropping strategies described above, some fields were increasingly split between two different crops. For example, before 1375 Adgerestoncroft and Cotecroft had been split-sown in approximately one year in two, but from 1383 onwards this proportion increased to 85 per cent.29 But where managerial tightness is echoed, the theme of experimentation is more fully elaborated, for alongside the increasing regularity of rotation on many fields there are clear signs that different cropping patterns were tried out on others, as Figure 5.3 suggests. More use was made of Hirnefeld on the west of the manor during this period, but rather than cultivating it in an orthodox fashion, reeves experimented with convertible husbandry. Demesne cropping at Hirnefeld was confined to the years 1394–8 and 1406–9; 28

In fact, the average area fallowed each year rose from 137 acres (32 per cent of the total cultivated area) in the years 1378–83, to 158 acres (34 per cent) in the 1390s, and 176 acres (39 per cent) in the period 1401–6. 29 Permanently divided fields such as Hirnefeld, Nymendole, and Smalemedwe could accommodate winter- and spring-sown crops in the same year, but otherwise the crops in any one field invariably belonged to the same sowing season.

1394 1395 1396 1397 1398 1399 1400 1401 1402 1403 1404 1405 1406 1407 1408 1409


Podilcroft Southale Smalemedwe (2) Sybaldesholm Gilberdesdole Adgerestoncroft Smalemedwe (1) Cotecroft Fenlond Nymendole (1) Lythesmedwe Hirnefeld (1) Hirnefeld (2) Hirnefeld (3) Nymendole (2) Nymendole (3) Fourscoreacres Inham

Key

Wheat

Mixtill

Bere

Oats

Dredge

Legumes

137

Fig. 5.3. Rotation of crops on the main fields at Wisbech Barton, 1394–1409. Source: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8.

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although 20 acres of the field were leased out in the interim,30 the remaining 22 acres were plainly allowed to revert to pasture at that time. Similarly, Inham was brought back into cultivation in the 1390s, but following two cycles of a three-course rotation, crops were only grown there in the years 1399–1401 and 1406–8. This was not the first occasion that convertible husbandry was employed at Wisbech, for Couleylond and Fenditchcroft had been cropped in this way during the 1330s and 1340s, but it was the first time that it was used in the cultivation of crops other than oats. There was also experimentation with rotations that were lengthier and more complex than the traditional three-course rotation. A four-course rotation was implemented at Adgerestoncroft between 1401 and 1408, at Gilberdesdole between 1404 and 1407, and, when it was in cultivation in the decade after 1399, at Inham. In each case, a second spring course was added, usually of oats, producing a rotation of winter–spring–spring–fallow. Moreover, between 1402 and 1406 a five–course rotation was practised at Nymendole (3)— part of the field formerly called Oldmedwe or Pygges—with the addition of a further spring course. The motivation for adopting new, more intensive rotations on these fields may simply have been to concentrate cropping on good-quality land, for all four fields seem to have been comparatively productive.31 But more frequent cropping was presumably also intended to raise overall output at a time of generally poor yields per acre. Either way, the reeves would have had to weigh up the benefit derived from increasing overall output against the potentially detrimental impact that this would have had on soil fertility. Judging by the timing of their implementation, the impetus for experimenting with these more intensive rotations seems to have come from John Nevo. Organizing their introduction was complex, for the adoption of a four-or five-course rotation alongside the 30 These 20 acres were rented on a seven-year lease to William Redich at 24d. per acre; the comparatively high value of this land suggests that it was not damaged by flooding. While it is impossible to know how this land was used by William, it is perhaps not without significance that demand for yearling sheep in the locality increased greatly at about the same time and that the lease was conditional upon the land being ploughed before being returned to demesne cultivation, the only recorded example in the Wisbech accounts of land being leased on such terms. 31 During the second half of the 14th century, the mean relative yield indices for crops grown solely on Adgerestoncroft, Gilberdesdole, and Nymendole are þ6, þ7, and þ7. The only figures for Inham come from the years 1413–22, when it measured þ13.


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three-course rotation practised on most other fields necessitated a series of adjustments, and must have been time-consuming to plan. For example, winter-sown crops had been grown on the same group of fields in 1395, 1398, and 1401, namely Adgerestoncroft, Gilberdesdole, Podilcroft, Southale, Smalemedwe, and Sybaldesholm, with only minor adjustments in each year as the acreage under wheat, mixtill, and bere was altered in line with prevailing conditions. But in 1404, following the introduction of a four-course rotation on Adgerestoncroft, another field—Lythesmedwe—was drafted in; in order for that to occur, Lythesmedwe had to be pulled out of its normal rotation and fallowed in 1401 and 1403. In turn, the place of Lythesmedwe in the spring course of 1404 was taken by Smalemedwe (1), which, as part of the winter course in 1395, 1398, and 1401, had to be fallowed in 1402. Given that Lythesmedwe was only slightly bigger than Smalemedwe (1), the considerable administrative effort required to rejig the cropping system must have been deemed worthwhile in order to make best use of available land. The planning and implementation of such changes may well help to explain why John Nevo was not able to pay equal attention to all aspects of farm management at this time. That we should not underestimate the amount of information that reeves had to juggle is in fact hinted at by the length of time that it took his successor to acquaint himself with the layout and use of the fields, for in his first year in charge of the winter-sowing season Martin Dousing muddled up the size and names of several of the fields.32 The geography of cropping not only provides insights into managerial strategies but it also has implications for arable productivity. It was argued in the last chapter that changes in the location of cropping contributed to the divergence of wheat and mixtill yields in the late 1360s and early 1370s. Since wheat subsequently held its value better than mixtill, this cannot have been a situation that officials at Wisbech would have wanted to perpetuate. The extent to which they deliberately took action to reverse this 32 In 1403–4 Dousing recorded that there were 34 acres of mixtill and 12 acres of bere in Gilberdesdole, 22 acres of wheat in Lythesmedwe, 10 acres of wheat in Podilcroft, 12 acres of mixtill in Southale, and 26 acres of wheat in Sybaldesholm. Given the usual acreage sown in these fields, it is more likely that there were 12 acres of mixtill and 12 acres of bere in Gilberdesdole, 26 acres of wheat in Lythesmedwe, 22 acres of wheat in Podilcroft, 34 acres of mixtill in Southale, and 10 acres of wheat in Sybaldesholm. This rearrangement does not alter which crops were sown in which fields.

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trend is difficult to prove conclusively, but the productivity of the two crops had nevertheless converged by the 1390s and cropping location once more seems to have played an important part in this. Several significant changes had taken place in the distribution of wheat and mixtill sowing by this time.33 First, the use of Cotecroft, Fenlond, and Nymendole was now more equitably spread between wheat and mixtill: in the period 1368–73, 58.5 per cent of mixtill and 7.4 per cent of wheat was sown on these fields, but this was subsequently levelled to 22.3 and 25.5 per cent respectively. Similarly, a lower proportion of wheat (25 per cent) but more mixtill (8.4 per cent) was sown on Inham, Lythesmedwe, and Podilcroft in the years 1393–8 (compared to 38.3 and 0 per cent in the late 1360s and early 1370s). Thirdly, although only mixtill was planted at Southale in the 1390s as in the earlier period, this field had by that time been cultivated consistently for thirty years rather than being a new and thus more fertile addition to the cropping schedule. Lastly, most of the fields cropped with wheat and mixtill during the 1390s were indistinguishable in terms of crop rotation, since by then they nearly all carried a regular three-course rotation.

Agrarian Techniques and the Maintenance of Soil Fertility Keeping a tight rein on what was produced and where was certainly vital to economic success as a farmer in this period, but this would ultimately have been an empty gesture had it not been accompanied by a parsimonious approach to how the crops were produced. The Management of Techniques By the turn of the fifteenth century, legumes were grown primarily as livestock fodder rather than as a soil nutrient, and reeves adjusted the acreage from year to year in order to ensure that enough, but not too much, fodder was produced to meet these consumption needs. This had been the case in the 1360s as well, but—as with the cropping strategies described above—there are signs that the policy was now pursued more strictly. As Table 5.2 shows, the area sown with 33

As in Chapter 4, distribution has been calculated from six consecutive accounts; in this case, for the years 1393–8.


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Table 5.2. The cultivation and consumption of legumes at Wisbech Barton, 1393–1405 (bushels) Yeara

Acres sown

Net yield

Remaining from previous harvest

1393 1394 1395 1396 1397

10 13 10 13 12

72 132 104 84 16

1401 1402 1403 1404 1405

5 6

26 33 38 38 12

41=2 3 6

Fodder usedb

Surplusb

Total

Per 100 lambsc

0 0 0 0 12

72 100 104 60 44

32 31 31 25 21

4 0 8 0 0

24 24 28 46 24

(30) (31) (46) (40)

0 32 0 24 48

— 6 (0) 13 (17) 9 (2) 13 (22) 18 (0) 14 8 13 (22) 36 (52)

a

The ‘year’ refers to that in which the crop was sown; the corresponding data (on the yield and consumption of that harvest) is taken from the following account. b Figures in parentheses are those originally recorded but subsequently crossed out and replaced. c Per 100 lambs at weaning (i.e. discounting those lambs that died in murrain before weaning and those that were taken in tithe). In 1393 allowance was made for lambs originally recorded as dying in murrain before weaning, but subsequently charged to the reeve super compotum. The data on lambs weaning in 1402 were excluded because several lambs were also bought at market. Source: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8.

legumes was increased slightly in 1394, 1396, 1402, and 1405 after fodder requirements had barely been covered by the previous harvest, but it is more revealing how sown acreage was reduced when the surplus at the end of the year exceeded even 1 quarter of legumes, as from the harvests of 1394, 1396, 1402, and 1403. This was a fine margin, yet all the reeves stuck to it. Indeed, in searching for the most effective way of producing enough legumes for the needs of their livestock, they also experimented with the rate at which legumes were sown. For example, 32 bushels were sown each year between 1395 and 1397 over 10, 13, and 12 acres, while 12 bushels were sown in the years 1406–8, despite the sown acreage dropping from 6 to 5 to 3 acres; in these latter years the seeding rate thus varied from 2 bushels an acre in 1406 to 4 bushels an acre two years later. Neither of these factors, though, can adequately account for John Nevo’s decision to halve the acreage under legumes in 1398.

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Instead, this can largely be explained by a massive reduction in the quantity of fodder given to lambs and pigs, from 91=4 quarters for lambs and 31=4 quarters for pigs in 1396 to just 3 quarters for lambs in 1401. As the table shows, this effectively reduced the amount of leguminous fodder per 100 lambs weaned by nearly 60 per cent, from 31–2 bushels from the harvests of 1393–5 to just 13–14 bushels from those of 1403–6. Tight management not only affected the arable sector; with low prices for many pastoral products in the 1390s, cutting costs in this area was equally important. Further testimony to the careful management of resources at this time is shown by where this diminishing amount of legumes was sown. Even though they were now only grown as a fodder crop and in small quantity, their beneficial effect on soil fertility had clearly not been forgotten. They had to be planted somewhere, and during the first decade of the fifteenth century they were regularly sown as part of the more complex crop rotations that were adopted at Adgerestoncroft and Nymendole (3) at that time, as Figure 5.3 shows. Reeves wisely considered any attempt to maintain soil fertility in these more intensive cropping cycles to be worthwhile. They also made every effort in this period to use what manure they could as effectively as possible. Indeed, the results of correlating stocking densities with crop yields per acre, which are shown in Table 5.3, suggest that arable and pastoral farming at Wisbech were more closely integrated at the turn of the fifteenth century than at any other time during the Middle Ages. Two points in particular stand out from the table: first, that the most significant coefficients are for bere and dredge, crops which not only bucked the trend at this time by being sown exclusively for the market, but which also produced the highest gross revenue per acre; and secondly, the strongest correlation for yields of wheat and mixtill as well as those of bere and dredge was with the stocking density of sheep, suggesting that farm managers increasingly opted for less labourintensive methods of manuring during this period of high wages and low grain prices. With regard to bere and dredge, the close integration of arable and pastoral resources was again probably linked to the introduction of the more complex crop rotations, for those fields which carried four- or five-course rotations in the first decade of the fifteenth century were sown with a very high proportion of these crops: in the period 1393–1409, 65 per cent of bere and 57 per cent


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Table 5.3. Correlation of crop yields per acre with stocking densities at Wisbech Barton, 1376–1409 Crop Winter-sown crops Wheat (16) Bere (16) Mixtill (16) Spring-sown crops Oats (16) Dredge (16) Legumes (15)

Horses

Cattle

Sheep

Pigs

Total

0.318 0.550 0.159

0.371 0.497 0.350

0.427 0.577 0.496

0.297 0.257 0.093

0.428 0.612 0.428

0.320 0.429 0.232

0.136 0.681 0.214

0.217 0.683 0.272

0.488 0.439 0.076

0.045 0.674 0.243

Notes: The number of paired variables for each crop is given in brackets. Italicized figures are significant at a 10 per cent level of probability. For each year, mean livestock units were calculated using livestock numbers from the opening and closing Michaelmas of each account. Stocking densities have been calculated per 100 acres sown with each individual crop. Source: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8.

of dredge was sown on Adgerestoncroft, Gilberdesdole, and Nymendole (3). Just as these fields were regularly planted with legumes, it seems that muck-spreading was directed towards them in an attempt to maintain soil fertility. More tangibly, pasturing arrangements were radically reorganized in this period. During the 1390s sheep were regularly grazed at Wisbech High Fen, but thereafter they were increasingly pastured on the farm itself. Parts of Inham were increasingly set aside as permanent pasture for the lord’s sheep and oxen rather than being leased, the amount of reserved pasture growing from 15 acres in 1401–3 to 30 acres in 1404, 50 acres in 1405–7, and 80 acres in 1408–9.34 Moreover, a 55-foot-long gabled and thatched sheep cote was constructed in 1404–5, and five years later an old sheephouse elsewhere on the farm was completely rebuilt, the bill for these two buildings coming to some £20.35 But what is most striking 34 There was also an increase in the acreage of meadow mown for hay for winter fodder, from 471=2 acres in 1394–1405 to 551=2 acres by 1408–9. 35 It is difficult to piece together exactly how the winter management of sheep changed during the course of the 14th and 15th centuries, though references to sheephouses in the Wisbech accounts are confined to certain periods—namely, 1327–42, 1370–89, and 1405–26—and it was in the intervening years that the demesne flock seems to have been wintered elsewhere, either at Wisbech High Fen or on other Ely bishopric manors.

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is how these developments fitted in with the management of fields for arable cultivation. In particular, the introduction of convertible husbandry at Inham and Hirnefeld must have aided the integration of the arable and pastoral sectors of the demesne economy. The area of Inham that was occasionally cultivated was separate from the section of the field that had become permanent pasture, but when the former was not being sown it would have been a comparatively simple matter to throw it open for restorative grazing. The same system was probably also used at Hirnefeld, which shared a boundary with Inham.36 The regularity of crop rotations on many other fields would also have facilitated the organization of fallow grazing, not least because groups of fields remained at the same stage of the cropping cycle throughout these years. But this was not all, for in this land of highly flexible field systems, the reeves managed to organize cropping in such a way that fields within each season were now often adjacent to one another: Fenlond and Nymendole, for example, were consistently fallowed together and shared a small stretch of their boundaries; likewise, in other seasons, near neighbours Smalemedwe and Sybaldesholm were fallowed together. The record of expenditure on weeding corn suggests that tight management was characteristic not only of local reeves but of central officials too. The auditors of the Wisbech accounts in this period consistently crossed out the sum of money originally recorded as being spent on hiring labour for this task and replaced it with a lower amount. In the 1370s and 1380s this was probably done to evade prosecution under the Statute of Labourers,37 but in the 1390s and 1400s it may well have been prompted by the state of the economy. During John Nevo’s time as reeve, the auditors dropped clear hints that they believed expenditure on hired labour should be reduced, for they first set and then progressively lowered an allowed amount for weeding: 30s. in 1397 and 1398, 26s. 8d. in 1399, and 20s. in 1401 and 1402.38 They subsequently settled on 26s. 8d., 36 The impetus to change pasturing arrangements was partly provided by the drowning of 373 sheep in Dec. 1398, caught by rising water levels on Wisbech High Fen. Significantly, it was during the same accounting year that Hirnefeld was first fallowed when it should otherwise have been sown and that a more intensive rotation scheme was introduced at Inham. 37 Hatcher, ‘England in the Aftermath of the Black Death’, 21–3. 38 Only 13s. 4d. was allowed for hiring weeding labour in 1403, when the harvests of wheat, bere, mixtill, and dredge were comparatively plentiful, presumably in anticipation of low market prices in 1404.


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which they invariably imposed between 1404 and 1411. The implication was clear: any money beyond this level was going to be added to the oneratio, the debt charged to the reeve at the end of each accounting year. The pressure on these reeves, and the stress that they must have been under, was mounting year by year. Even so, the reeves stuck to the task in hand, and—in common with most other areas of farm management—responded in a positive fashion. Analysing their role in terms of weeding is complicated by the intervention of the auditors from 1397, but a clear impression of their responsiveness to economic circumstances emerges nonetheless. For example, a comparatively low level of wages in 1377 encouraged the employment of more hired labour for this task, while hired inputs were reduced in the following year when wages rose. Similarly, farm managers seem to have responded to unusually good market prices for wheat and mixtill in 1383 by raising inputs. Even after 1397 their reading of the economic situation seems to have been perceptive, for the original expenditure on hiring weeders in the period 1395–1410 shows a very close correlation with prevailing grain prices: in the years 1396–8 and 1404–10, during the reeveships of William Waryn and Martin Dousing, the amount of money spent seems to have been determined by price in the preceding year, while in the years 1397–8 and 1401–4, when John Nevo was at the helm, the current price of grain held sway. Seeding rates provide a further illustration of the tightness of management in this period. Although sowing densities at Wisbech changed little over the long term, they sometimes varied considerably from year to year; only in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, however, are there appreciable signs of a strategy behind this. This strategy was not complex: it simply involved keeping a careful eye on the competing uses of each type of grain. For wheat and bere the influential factor appears to have been the success of the previous harvest, a better harvest resulting in a higher seeding rate and vice versa.39 Effectively, this ensured that the surplus of grain available for sale was maximized after a poor harvest, when prices were better than usual. Similarly, the seeding rates of most other crops were affected by consumption needs. Oats provides the best example of this: for nineteen years between 1377 and 1409 39 For nineteen years in the period 1377–1409, correlation analysis of total available grain with seeding rates produced coefficients of 0.591 for wheat (significant at a 1 per cent level of probability) and 0.534 for bere (significant at 2 per cent).

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correlating the quantity of oats consumed on the estate with seeding rates produces a coefficient of 0.698, which is significant at a 0.1 per cent level of probability; in other words, when consumption of oats increased, the sowing density of the crop decreased. The Impact on Productivity The resting of some fields and the shedding of unproductive acres from others should, in theory, have proved beneficial to crop yields in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, much as Postan and others surmised. But yields of most crops at Wisbech were generally lower during this period than at any other time covered by the accounts. The wet weather at the turn of the fifteenth century is doubtless partly to blame for this, but the role played by agrarian techniques cannot be overlooked either. The intensity of arable farming at this time was certainly very low. Legumes occupied an average of just 2.3 per cent of the total sown area in the years 1376–1409 and were invariably sown in the spring phase of any crop rotation. Meanwhile, in fifteen out of twenty years labour inputs in weeding, according to the final expenditure recorded for this task,40 were in the range 0.6–0.9 mandays per acre sown. These inputs were significantly lower than they had been in the decades before the Black Death, though in both cases the significant period of change had been the 1360s and early 1370s. Yet yields per acre at Wisbech fell markedly after the 1370s: between 1360–79 and 1390–1409 wheat yields fell by 10 per cent, yields of dredge by 14 per cent, yields of bere by 20 per cent, and yields of oats, legumes, and mixtill by 23 per cent, 29 per cent, and 40 per cent respectively. The most important factor affecting arable productivity at this time was probably labour inputs in other tasks. In some years farm officials appear to have been forced to reduce the use of labour, a phenomenon which is most clearly visible in the case of muckspreading. Although there was little change in the availability of manure,41 the evidence for muck-spreading reveals that less manure 40

While the auditors’ earlier changes to wage levels did not affect the quantity of hired labour inputs, it is difficult to judge whether the same can be said of the fixed allowances of 1397–1411. 41 Livestock units averaged 103.4 in the period 1376–1409, 4 per cent lower than in the period 1349–75, but mean stocking densities were virtually unchanged, at 36 units per 100 sown acres.


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was being spread by hand at this time: in the years 1349–75, 1,472 measures of muck had been spread each year but this fell to 1,271 measures in the period 1376–1409. The driving force behind this was probably plague, for year-to-year variations in the quantity of muck spread seem to have been caused largely by intermittent, plague-related labour shortages. Muck-spreading at Wisbech in this period was done by customary tenants as part of their winter and summer labour services. However, 30 per cent or more of these labour services had to be commuted in the years 1383, 1393–5, and 1405–6; it is surely no coincidence that these came during or immediately after the national or extra-regional outbreaks of plague recorded in 1379–83, 1389–93, and 1405–7.42 Most of these absentees probably moved away temporarily as news of the plague reached them, though some holdings may of course have been left vacant after the death of tenants. Either way, reeves were forced to reduce labour inputs in muck-spreading and certain other tasks, in order to concentrate their resources on the fundamental requirement of ploughing. So, while 27 customary man-days were used for muck-spreading in 1389, only 111=4 man-days could be spared in 1394, while in the previous year muck-spreading had to be abandoned altogether.43 However, these acute shortages of labour were restricted to just a few years; more permanent changes in the use of labour were chiefly the result of deliberate choice. The exceptionally poor crop yields in the 1390s and 1400s came at a time when much less attention was given to the preparation of fields for sowing. Ploughing the bare earth of fallow fields not only aerated the soil in advance of sowing but also helped to control the development of weeds by uprooting them. Fallow ploughing had been carried out intensively in the decades following the Black Death, but declined at the turn of the fifteenth century from 402 customary plough-days each year in the 1370s and 1380s to 228 plough-days a year in the 1390s and 1400s, a fall of 43 per cent. Fallow acreage was recorded from 1378 onwards, and so these data can be translated into labour inputs 42

Hatcher, Plague, Population, 57. Interestingly, a considerable number of man-days was still allocated to the hand-spreading of manure between 1404 and 1406 in spite of the dearth of labour at this time, presumably to help sustain soil fertility where more intensive crop rotations had been introduced. The perceived necessity of spreading sufficient manure is particularly well illustrated in 1404: muck was normally spread at the rate of 67 measures per man-day, but in 1404 this increased to 86 measures. 43

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per acre: during the years 1378–89 an annual mean of 1.85 customary man-days per acre was spent in fallow ploughing, but this had decreased by 57 per cent to 0.79 man-days per acre by 1397– 1406. The amount of harrowing that was done declined at about the same time. Historians tend to overlook the importance of harrowing, but it played a critical role in the preparation of soil during the sowing seasons. Harrowing involved pulling a rectangular grid, in which wooden or iron teeth were set, across the ploughed fields.44 As illustrated in the Luttrell Psalter of c.1340, this seems to have been carried out just after sowing in medieval England, thereby helping to cover the seed, but it could equally be done between ploughing and sowing since the main aim of harrowing was to give the seedbed as fine and uniform a texture as possible; this was vital for keeping the temperature and moisture content of soil at their most advantageous levels.45 Yet while oats were provided for horses harrowing at winter and spring sowing at Wisbech until the 1370s, the same information in later accounts suggests that thereafter harrowing was sometimes only performed at spring sowing and occasionally was not done at all.46 The main cause of this decline was a reduction in the size of the permanent demesne staff: in 1383 the famuli included three fulltime ploughmen and one ‘seeder’, who presumably also helped with the ploughing, but by 1395 the latter was no longer employed. Not only did this entail a reduction in harrowing, but a large proportion of the customary labour that had been used for fallow ploughing in the 1370s and 1380s was thereafter used to plough the cultivated land instead. With rising wages and falling prices it was no longer profitable to maintain the workforce at the same size and, while a certain amount of juggling could be done, not every task could be performed as effectively; it was in tasks such as fallow ploughing and harrowing where this was most keenly felt. In the end, the very low crop yields at Wisbech at the turn of the fifteenth century were probably caused by environmental circumstances as well as lower labour inputs. But in weighing up the 44 In 1430 the Wisbech demesne owned seven harrows, one with thirty-five iron teeth. 45 Langdon, Horses, Oxen and Technological Innovation, 141–2; Backhouse, Medieval Rural Life, 20–1; Evans, Farm and the Village, 43–4. 46 The allocation of oats to mares fell from 6–8 quarters each year in 1377–8 to 4 quarters or fewer in the years 1395–9 and 1405–9; no oats were provided for them during the 1380s and the years 1401–3.


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contribution of each, we should bear in mind that ‘Long-term changes in the medieval climate occurred for reasons exogenous to the economy, but their impact depended partly upon endogenous factors.’47 Flooding was certainly a significant problem at Wisbech in the 1390s and 1400s, but it is not necessarily the case that heavy rainfall or a stormy sea were wholly to blame. In this area of the country a great deal of money needed to be spent on the maintenance of sea defences and drainage systems, and when rainfall increased expenditure on their upkeep needed to rise as well. Judging by the ‘precipitation scores’ for medieval England produced by Ogilvie and Farmer, the amount of rainfall was markedly higher between the early 1360s and the early 1380s and again between 1396 and 1404.48 But whereas expenditure on ditching and banking at Wisbech averaged 71s. 31=2 d. each year in the period 1364–83, this fell to only 33s. 53=4 d. in the decade after 1389. To some extent the shortfall in expenditure was covered by customary labour, for the number of customary man-days spent on tasks such as ‘desiccating’ the fields increased from 39 to 136 over this period, but this cannot account for all of the difference and, in any case, labour services are likely to have been performed even more grudgingly than ever by this time. As Darby put it, ‘the neglect of watercourses for but a few months might produce considerable damage in some localities’. The same author suggests that, after the Black Death, the repair of fenland banks and channels was characterized by confusion and neglect; Wisbech was probably no exception.49

Livestock Husbandry The changing nature and impact of management at the turn of the fifteenth century is also apparent in the pastoral sector at Wisbech. As with arable husbandry, there are clear indications that reeves responded to the deteriorating economic situation by implementing tighter, more economical strategies, not least in terms of minimizing expenditure on the maintenance of livestock numbers. For example, the working lives of draught livestock were considerably extended: between 1352 and 1374 adult mares were kept for a mean of 47 48 49

Bailey, ‘Per impetum maris’, 207. Ogilvie and Farmer, ‘Documenting the Medieval Climate’, 127–8. Darby, Medieval Fenland, 151–3 (quotation at 152).

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3.7 years, but this increased to five years in the period 1376–1409;50 likewise, the working lives of oxen were extended from 4.6 years in the period 1349–75 to 7.5 years by 1376–1409. But such a change was not without consequences, and in taking this decision farm officials would have had to weigh these consequences against any financial advantage. They must have accepted, for instance, that horses and oxen would generally work at a slower rate. The reasons that reeves gave for selling mares certainly implies as much: during the fourteenth century the stated reason was invariably that mares were weak or old; but by the first decade of the fifteenth century the only explanation proffered was that they were unfit for stocking. The mortality rate of draught livestock—and mares in particular— increased significantly during this period as a result; weak or old mares may not have brought a high selling price, but they were certainly more valuable than dead ones.51 With the exception of oxen, which were invariably bought at market, the chief means of replacing livestock in this period was reproduction. Fertility rates were consequently of great significance and there is evidence that reeves went to considerable lengths to improve them. As the last chapter discussed, the reproduction rate of ewes was successfully increased in the 1370s through the cessation of milking. By the turn of the fifteenth century, horse-breeding at Wisbech was also more successful than it had been in the 1360s and early 1370s, for mares were now less prone to suffer barren years and up to four foals were born every year.52 Even so, purchases occasionally had to be made, though it is a further indication of tight management that reeves increasingly prioritized some animals over others in this respect. While the pig herd was allowed to be run down, key market purchases were occasionally made of mares and sheep: the former for their draught power, and the latter 50 The rejigging of customary works during this period resulted in a considerable decrease in the number of labour services used for carrying and carting. Consequently, demesne mares did an increasing amount of carting, and it is significant that when a mare was bought in 1402 it was specifically noted that it was to be used for this purpose. 51 In the years 1349–75 the mean death rate of mares was just 1.7 per cent, but this increased to 10.6 per cent in the period 1376–1409. Nor were the working lives of Wisbech horses simply extended into old age, judging by the unusually high death rate among 2- and 3-year-old foals after the mid-1390s. 52 There is some indication that breeding success was cyclical, perhaps indicating variability in the quality of sires: for example, two foals were produced in 1401 and 1402, four foals in 1403, 1404, and 1406, but only one foal in 1407, 1408, and 1409.


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for their commercial importance. For instance, nearly 300 sheep were bought in the years 1399–1402, following the disastrous winter of 1398–9 when nearly half the flock was drowned at Wisbech High Fen, and a further 344 sheep were purchased in the years 1407–9, after a death rate of 34.2 per cent in 1407 and the enforced sale two years later of 372 sheep that had contracted liverfluke; together these two market sprees accounted for almost 90 per cent of sheep bought since 1375. The decision to rely chiefly on breeding to maintain flocks and herds would certainly have reduced expenditure, but again reeves would have had to take into account the significant disadvantages that such a policy entailed. In particular, increased reliance on breeding seems to have aided the spread of contagious disease, a phenomenon which is strikingly apparent in the case of sheep. As William Youatt warned in 1837, after ‘breeding too long from close affinities’, sheep ‘do not bear the severity of the weather quite so well, and perhaps . . . are somewhat more subject to disease’.53 On several occasions in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries the Wisbech reeves stated that some sheep did not produce fleeces at all because they were bald. It seems likely that this was a reference to sheep scab, as loss of wool was one of the chief symptoms of scab.54 Notably, such references to bald sheep at Wisbech occur in runs, in consecutive years between 1396 and 1398 and for three years between 1406 and 1409, suggesting that once scab had become established in the flock, it took several years to disappear. These outbreaks were clearly reflected by higher levels of mortality: in the periods 1377–95, 1401–5, and 1410–12 average mortality in the flock was only 7 per cent, but the death rate rose to 11.5 per cent in the years 1396–7 and 19.4 per cent between 1406 and 1409.55 Significantly, the factor that seems to have been most influential in breaking these cycles of scab was the purchase of considerable numbers of sheep in 1399 and 1408–9. The policy of greater self-sufficiency may well have had wider ramifications too. As indicated in Chapter 2, fleece weights at Wisbech were comparatively low in the 1390s and 1400s, falling to 53

Youatt, Sheep, 494–5. Trow-Smith, History of British Livestock Husbandry, 155–6. Some historians doubt whether scab actually caused death, though both Henry Best, the 17th-century flockmaster, and modern veterinary experts suggest otherwise: Stone, ‘Productivity and Management’, 13. 54 55

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little more than 11=2 lb on several occasions in the first decade of the fifteenth century. This pattern fits extremely well with the widespread collapse in fleece weights on demesne farms throughout southern England and, as Stephenson argued, the period 1393– 1410 was characterized by a series of unusually severe winters, culminating in the great winter of 1407–8. In this last, rated as being among the coldest of the second millennium, the Thames froze over;56 more mundanely, the lord’s swans at Wisbech needed extra food ‘when the ice was hard’. Yet, cold though this period might have been, the pattern of wool yields at Wisbech shows little correlation with this chronology on a year-to-year basis.57 Instead, the Wisbech evidence suggests that human decisionmaking was primarily responsible for the low wool yields of this period, for the turn of the fifteenth century was also a time of falling wool prices and managerial change. Finding a buyer at an acceptable price was not always possible and the practice of storing wool, in the hope that the price would subsequently increase, became more common. Prior to 1368 substantial quantities of old wool were sold on just two occasions, but thereafter the wool clip was regularly kept and sold during the following accounting year. Storing wool certainly affected its value, for prices of old and new wool sold during the same year usually differed: in 1393 new wool sold for 24d. per stone but old wool for 20d.; while in 1395 new wool fetched 30d. per stone and old wool 28d. These price differences presumably reflect deterioration in the quality of old wool, but as the last chapter suggested, there are indications that the weight of fleeces kept in storage for up to a year decreased as the wool dried out. Even so, the Wisbech reeves were so responsive to changing market prices that the strategy of selling old wool was not consistently employed. Old wool may have comprised 65 per cent of fleeces sold in the years 1393–1403, when wool prices averaged less than 30d. per stone. But as soon as the value of new wool rose to 42d. per stone in 1404, the reeve promptly responded by selling freshly shorn wool. 56

Lamb, Climatic History, 566–8. Although fleece weights were exceptionally low during the harsh winters of 1402–3 and 1407–8, and improved in 1404–5 (seemingly the only relatively mild winter during this period), they were heavier still during the severe winters of 1398–9 and 1403–4. Indeed, the yield of 2.12 lb per fleece in 1399 was one of the highest recorded in the post-Black Death era. 57


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The reason for the fall in fleece weights probably has more to do with how the sheep themselves were managed. The reduction in fodder provision for lambs in the late 1390s played a significant part here: between 1401 and 1410 lambs received less than half the quantity of legumes that they had previously, which coincides with a run of extremely low fleece weights between 1403 and 1409. But probably more important still were the effects of disease, which can most clearly be discerned in years when scab was rife. Judging by fleece weights in these years, outbreaks of scab were not confined to the bald sheep: in 1397, when wool shorn in 1396 and 1397 was sold, the average yield from the flock was only 1.79 lb per fleece, and yields were even lower in 1406, 1407, and 1409, when the mean weight of fleeces dropped to 1.51–1.63 lb. In most other years fleece weights were considerably higher, particularly on either side of these outbreaks of scab: in 1395 the average wool yield was 2.02 lb per fleece, while mean fleece weights in 1399, 1405, and 1410 were 2.12 lb, 1.91 lb, and 2.26 lb respectively. Significantly, the heaviest of these fleece weights came immediately after the substantial purchases of sheep, and were in fact not dissimilar to the wool yields of the early fourteenth century; importing fresh sheep from elsewhere seems not only to have curtailed the spread of disease and temporarily brought down mortality rates, but it probably also heralded a substantial improvement in fleece weights. As Stephenson and others have noted, disease among sheep was particularly prevalent at this time and seems to have had a direct impact on wool yields.58 But the Wisbech evidence suggests that the incidence of ovine disease was not necessarily a consequence of exogenous conditions; instead it was the result of a series of deliberate decisions that were an appropriate response to the low wool prices that generally dominated this era. The impact of managerial decisions is equally apparent in terms of lambing success. Lambing rates at Wisbech were generally very high between 1377 and 1409, which—as we saw in the last chapter—can best be explained by the cessation of milking from the 1370s onwards. But this does not account for the year-to-year variation in lambing rates, which was particularly apparent during the first decade of the fifteenth century. The main problem seems to 58

Stephenson, ‘Wool Yields’, 381–2; Bailey, Marginal Economy?, 126; Postles, ‘Fleece Weights’, 98.

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have been that some of the young ewes were barren, a recognized fact of sheep-farming.59 Yet this was clearly not a constant problem, for excellent lambing rates were achieved in 1401, 1403, and 1406 despite there being large numbers of young ewes in the breeding flock. A more consistent explanation emerges by examining the life-cycle of young ewes, for the incidence of barrenness corresponds very closely with high mortality in the flock two years earlier, that is during the season in which the young ewes were born: for example, poor lambing rates of 89 and 87 lambs per 100 ewes in 1408–9 came after high lamb mortality of 19.3 per cent and 27.5 per cent in 1406–7. Likewise, years in which fertility was high correspond with low death rates among lambs two years earlier: for instance, a lambing rate of 103 in 1403 followed mortality of 5.6 per cent in 1401; and a lambing rate of 101 in 1406 followed mortality of 8 per cent in 1404. On the assumption that mortality rates provide a reasonable indication of the health of surviving lambs born that year, it seems that weakened female lambs were more likely to be barren during their first reproductive cycle. Going back one stage further, the prevalence of disease in the years in which the development of young ewes was hampered was chiefly the result of the policy of self-sufficiency. Once again, the causal chain—from deteriorating economy to managerial response to falling productivity—is clear.

Conclusion In common with other demesne farms, the profitability of direct management at Wisbech was severely reduced in the last quarter of the fourteenth and first decade of the fifteenth centuries as agricultural prices fell in the face of high cultivation costs. Nor was the economy the only problem: plague, for example, intermittently stripped the demesne of some of its workforce. But unlike many other landlords, who increasingly turned to rentier farming at this time, the bishop of Ely kept his Wisbech demesne in hand, sowing approximately the same acreage of land and striving to maintain livestock numbers at a constant level. The bishop seems to have 59 Owen, Sheep Production, 183. At Wisbech, 28 per cent of young ewes were reportedly barren in 1402, followed by 24 per cent in 1404, 16 per cent in 1405, 41 per cent in 1408, and 69 per cent in 1409.


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been able to extract an unusually large number of labour services from his tenantry, but his main advantage was that he could still rely on the services of highly skilled and capable reeves. The Wisbech accounts indicate that reeves were, on the whole, extremely responsive to changing economic conditions in the way that they handled the production and disposal of arable and pastoral produce. They were clearly also willing to experiment in various ways, especially with the rotation of crops. But probably the most significant feature of farm management at Wisbech in this period was the tightness with which decision-making was controlled, not least in terms of the sophisticated methods used to assess which crops were best suited to the production of a marketable surplus, or the increasingly effective integration of arable and pastoral husbandry. Indeed, if anything management at Wisbech seems to have become more proficient as the economy worsened in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. As such, it may well have prevented a very difficult situation from becoming an unsustainable one. Of course, at a time of falling prices and high wages tight and efficient management also meant reducing inputs and this had a significant impact on productivity. Falling labour inputs in arable farming appear to have been the main cause of lower crop yields, but the causal relationship between management and productivity is perhaps most clearly evident in sheep-farming. The policy of maintaining the sheep flock by natural increase rather than by importing stock helped to reduce expenditure, but the strategy also encouraged the spread of contagious disease, which in turn adversely affected fleece weights and lambing rates and heightened the level of mortality in the flock. Declining yields were the inevitable consequence of pursuing more favourable financial returns, yet this was a necessary strategy for continued seigneurial involvement in agriculture.

6 The Last Phase of Direct Cultivation The demesne farm of Wisbech Barton, including all its arable, meadow, and pasture, together with the corn, livestock, and customary works and payments that remained, was eventually leased in September 1429 for £48 a year. This was the end of an era, and not just for Wisbech, for by this time the vast majority of demesne farms on the great estates of medieval England were in the hands of lessees. As we have seen, many demesnes had already been leased by 1410; on most that remained, this transformation in management took place during the two decades that followed. Elsewhere on the bishop of Ely’s estate, for example, the demesnes at Somersham, Feltwell, Wilburton, and Downham were also leased during the 1420s.1 The Norwich Cathedral Priory manors of Hindolveston, Great Cressingham, Hindringham, and Martham were permanently taken out of direct cultivation between 1416 and 1425, while Crowland Abbey’s Cambridgeshire demesnes at Oakington and Cottenham were both leased in 1430.2 Smaller landlords sometimes kept demesne arable in hand for longer, and a few larger landlords retained direct control over some of their sheep flocks into the middle of the fifteenth century,3 but with these few exceptions the change from direct demesne cultivation to rentier farming was effectively complete by 1430. 1 PRO, SC6/1135/9; Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 456; Maitland, ‘History of a Cambridgeshire Manor’, 432; CUL, EDR D10/3/1. On other manors, such as Brandon, Glemsford, and Shelford, demesne farming had been abandoned during the depressed years at the turn of the 15th century: Chicago UL, Bacon 660–1; PRO, LR3/61/4; PRO, SC6/1134/3. 2 Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 457–60; Page, Estates of Crowland Abbey, 154. 3 See e.g. Bailey, Marginal Economy?, 291–2; Dyer, Making a Living, 333.

The Last Phase of Direct Cultivation

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With a rapidly diminishing number of demesnes in hand in the 1410s and 1420s, the near-complete series of Wisbech accounts has much to offer simply in terms of our understanding of the nature of agriculture in this period, but this chapter seeks to take the analysis of them a stage further. Important though the shift away from seigneurial involvement in agriculture is, there are few studies of demesne farm management in the years immediately prior to leasing. This cannot but have been a difficult time in terms of decisionmaking: reeves must have struggled to generate profits from year to year; and landlords and their advisers presumably agonized over more strategic questions, not just whether to persevere with direct cultivation or not, but also when and to whom it would be most advantageous to lease their demesnes. This chapter aims to plug this gap. In particular, it seeks to ascertain the degree to which farm officials continued to make careful and judicious choices, whether they were tempted to introduce more sweeping agricultural changes, and the extent to which they were successful in these ventures. Given the nature of surviving documentation, the process of decision-making at the estate centre is impossible to reconstruct in comparable detail, yet the chapter will also try to pinpoint the moment when the decision to lease the demesne of Wisbech was taken. Most importantly, it scours the period for precise evidence of what prompted estate officials to give up demesne farming at Wisbech after probably two centuries or more of direct cultivation. As the last chapter indicated, this transformation in estate management is usually explained by the deterioration in economic and social conditions. Although the fall in prices first took place in the mid-1370s, the period 1380–1430 is generally considered to be a single economic cycle, characterized by low prices, rising wages, and the retreat of serfdom. Indeed, if anything, conditions at Wisbech appear to have grown more hostile to demesne agriculture in the 1420s. The value of the lease of the market and fair at Wisbech should broadly reflect the amount of trade passing through the town: having consistently remained at £16 per annum in the 1410s, it progressively dropped to £13 6s. 8d. in 1421–2, £11 6s. 8d. in 1423, and £10 13s. 4d. in the late 1420s and early 1430s.4 On top of this, the number of customary labour services that the bishop of Ely was able to enforce at Wisbech Barton fell by nearly half in the 4

CUL, EDR D7/1/12–21, D7/2/1–7.

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early 1420s, from 1,742 man-days per year in the period 1410–21 to 909 during the remainder of the decade. To be able to use even this amount of cheap forced labour at such a late date was a luxury that few landlords could boast of, but the scale and speed of the decline must nevertheless have had a significant impact on manorial finances. However, sheer profitability was probably not the only reason for the shift from direct cultivation to demesne leasing. In fact, the 1410s and 1420s must to some extent be treated separately from the late fourteenth century and turn of the fifteenth, for these were also years of economic opportunity in the countryside. As Pollard noted with respect to the economy of north-eastern England, economic conditions generally improved for agricultural producers at this time.5 The rise in wages had pretty much stabilized, and national product prices were beginning to show signs of a tentative recovery: wheat and wool prices in the 1410s were respectively 18 per cent and 9 per cent higher than in the period 1380–99; the price of rye in the 1420s was better than in any decade since the 1370s; and the price of cheese in the 1410s and 1420s was higher than it had been since the 1360s.6 The market for meat appears to have been particularly buoyant at this time: indeed, at Wisbech the sale price of oxen and ewes increased respectively by 17 per cent and 58 per cent between the 1390s and the 1410s. Farming for profit was clearly still much harder than it had been before 1375, but that does not necessarily mean that it became impossible. The economic viability of farming was certainly of interest to landlords, but for those who maintained a great household and managed a large estate it was not the only consideration. Indeed, the internal pressures of estate management at this level must have raised the line that divided a profitable situation from an unprofitable one, and in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries these pressures could potentially have swung the balance in favour of abandoning the direct cultivation of demesne farms. First, the administrative costs of direct cultivation were comparatively high: great landlords had to employ a large number of managerial staff in order to farm at all; the collection of rent from a lessee, on the other 5

Pollard, ‘North-Eastern Economy’, 91–3. Farmer, ‘Prices and Wages, 1350–1500’, 444, 467, 503–4, 512–14, 517–18. Between 1390–1409 and 1410–29 national wages for reaping and binding corn rose by only 7 per cent, and those for threshing and winnowing by just 3 per cent. 6


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hand, was much less time-consuming to administer and wage bills could therefore be reduced. Moreover, landlords looked not only for profit from their estates but also for a steady cash flow that would help to budget for the consistently high levels of household expenditure. Insolvency may well have lain behind the decision of some landlords to sell off a number of their flocks and herds at the turn of the fifteenth century,7 but in the longer term demesne leasing, by sheltering landlords from the worst vicissitudes of the weather, provided an attractively stable and regular source of income. Nor perhaps should we underestimate the build-up of cultural momentum and the pressures of fashion, for as the number of great landlords who opted in favour of leasing grew, so the impetus to follow suit must have been stronger. But even taking into account the viability of farming and the pressures of estate management, there are indications that yet another factor was at play: the quality of farm management. Tellingly, not only were people willing to take on the land that landlords no longer wished to farm, but the rental income paid by these lessees was often higher than the profit that landlords had made during the last phase of direct cultivation. The example of the duchy of Lancaster’s manors of Raunds and Higham was highlighted in Chapter 1, and other examples are not hard to find: at Bishop’s Clyst in Devon, for instance, the total income from the manor exceeded £39 per year in the three decades after it was leased in 1420; by comparison the profit for the seven years before leasing was roughly £33 per year.8 From a landlord’s perspective, of course, such figures more than justified the decision to lease the demesne. But the implications go much further than this, for the lessees must have been confident when taking on the farms not only that they could cover the rent in order to break even, but also that they could make a profit on top of this. In other words, they must have believed that they could manage these lands much more effectively than the landlords had. Given the emphasis in this book on the sophistication of demesne farm management, this apparent contradiction merits closer investigation. 7

The potential need quickly to liquidate assets may help to explain the move towards centralized accounting of livestock on several estates at this time: Stephenson, ‘Productivity of Medieval Sheep’, 58–9; Bailey, Marginal Economy?, 291–2; Chicago UL, Bacon 506–10; Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 236. 8 Alcock, ‘East Devon Manor, II’, 173. Further examples are given in Bean, ‘Landlords’, 581.

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The Sale and Consumption of Produce The Wisbech reeves instigated a number of significant changes in the marketing and consumption of arable and pastoral products during the first half of the 1410s. In terms of crop use, two developments stand out in particular: mixtill was now grown almost exclusively to provide food for the manorial workforce; while wheat production, which had increasingly been diverted towards consumption during the course of the fourteenth century, was now aimed more towards the market again. Although an average of 293=4 quarters of wheat was still distributed around the estate each year, an annual mean of over 55 quarters of wheat was sold, usually it seems in the local area.9 This surplus was generated mainly by a substantial increase in sown acreage, for a mean of 95 acres of wheat were sown each year in the 1410s and 1420s, compared to 62 in the years 1376–1409; by contrast, the area under mixtill dwindled from 65 acres to just 34. The sale and consumption of pastoral products also underwent structural change. Income from sheep-farming fell considerably: as we saw in the last chapter, yearling sheep were sold at market at the turn of the fifteenth century in order to boost flagging farm income at an economic low point; by 1411, however, estate policy had reverted to using Wisbech as a breeding ground for supplying yearling sheep to wool-producing manors.10 Wool sales consequently contributed a larger share of sheep-farming revenue at Wisbech again,11 although income from the sale of wool had dropped considerably by this time, reflecting a generally smaller clip and, in the 1420s, falling wool prices. A more significant change, however, was the diversification into dairy herding, for in the years 9 Of the wheat that was harvested, 45 per cent was sold (49 per cent if super compotum sales and avantagium are included). Wheat was listed as being sold in patria in 1410–11, 1413–24, and 1430. 10 Between 1410 and 1430, 51 per cent of yearling sheep were transferred elsewhere on the estate and only 3 per cent were sold. Notably, the destination of sheep bred at Wisbech had changed once more: having been sent almost exclusively to other manors in the marshland bailiwick until the 1350s, and to Doddington in the Cambridgeshire peat fens in the 1360s and 1370s, yearlings were now sent further afield, to the bishop’s Huntingdonshire manors of Colne, Somersham, and Pidley; the number of demesnes still in hand had presumably shrunk in the intervening years. 11 Wool sales made up 69 per cent of the revenue from sheep-farming in the period 1314–48, 63 per cent in the years 1349–75, 43 per cent in the period 1376–1409, and 73 per cent in the years 1410–30.


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32

Mean annual income (£)

28 24

Wheat

Dredge

Mixtill

Sheep

Bere

Cattle

20 16 12 8 4 0 1314–1348

1349–1375

1376–1409

1410–1430

Fig. 6.1. Main sources of market income by period at Wisbech Barton, 1314–1430. Source: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8.

1414–26 the demesne maintained a herd of twenty-five to thirty cows.12 Annual revenue from cattle-farming increased almost fourfold during these years, from £3 (7 per cent of total farm income) in the period 1376–1409 to £11 8s. per year (30 per cent) in the years 1414–26; at this time cattle-farming outstripped even sales of wheat in terms of the generation of income. Nearly three-fifths of this came from leasing the lactage of cows, at 5s. 6d. per cow from 1414 to 1421 and 5s. each thereafter; the remainder chiefly from livestock sold at the end of their working lives. As this suggests, the main objective of this enterprise was to raise cash: although the dairy herd supplied nearly half of the oxen required for ploughing, this amounted to less than a tenth of the herd’s total value to the farm. As Figure 6.1 shows, the pattern of cash income at Wisbech had changed considerably over the course of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries; these changes encapsulate several important themes in the chronology of medieval agriculture. First, there was a distinct long-term shift in balance. Before the Black Death, when 12 For other examples of cattle-ranching at this time, see Mate, ‘Pastoral Farming’, 524–5; Watkins, ‘Cattle Grazing’, 21; Dyer, ‘Warwickshire Farming’, 21; and Gage, History and Antiquities, 325.

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population was comparatively high, the bulk of farm income was derived from selling grain, especially the bread grains mixtill and wheat. However, after the Black Death, and especially after the Indian summer for demesne farming, pastoral farming accounted for a much larger share of the income: livestock contributed 22 per cent between 1314 and 1375, but 48 per cent thereafter. Secondly, farm managers clearly sensed changes in demand for a bread grains of differing quality. Until the 1370s the main cash crop at Wisbech was mixtill, a mixed grain that would have made comparatively coarse bread. But in the aftermath of the Black Death, when standards of living for the majority of those that survived increased, income from mixtill fell steeply—more steeply in fact than for any other crop. Meanwhile, annual revenue from wheat, which could be made into the finest bread, increased two and a half times between 1376–1409 and 1410–30, by which time it produced more money than all the other crops put together.13 Thirdly, there appear to have been cycles in the profitability of different pastoral enterprises. Sheep-farming had always served farm officials at Wisbech well in terms of market income, but it was not necessarily a panacea for all economic ills in the Middle Ages. As more and more farmers turned to sheep-farming after the Black Death, when demand for better-quality cloth increased, the market gradually became saturated. Not only did wool prices generally fall from the 1370s onwards, but by the 1410s and 1420s reeves at Wisbech were sometimes even having to resort to offering an avantagium on sales, a bonus of 1 stone of free wool, to persuade people to buy the clip at all.14 This would certainly help to explain the move towards cattle-ranching, which by this time generated more revenue for the demesne than sheep-farming. It is often implied that great ecclesiastical landlords shied away from making substantial changes to the way in which their demesnes were run. With the introduction of dairying and a substantial expansion in wheat cultivation during the early fifteenth century, this was clearly not the case at Wisbech. But by the same token, we cannot simply assume that change in itself could provide answers to the difficult questions posed to farmers at this time. Indeed, given 13 For a discussion of patterns in medieval grain consumption, see Stone, ‘Consumption of Field Crops’. 14 An avantagium on the wool clip was given to buyers in 1411, 1417, 1420–1, and 1423.


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the slight upturn in the economy and the fact that a larger proportion of produce was now sold,15 we would expect farm income to have increased. However, mean annual income from the sale of agricultural products actually declined slightly during the last twenty years of direct demesne cultivation, slipping from £43 per annum in the period 1376–1409 to £40 thereafter. This may only be a whisper as yet, but it nevertheless suggests that all was no longer well with the running of the farm.

The Disappearance of Cereal-Cropping Strategies Throughout the fourteenth century and into the first decade of the fifteenth, the Wisbech reeves consistently employed highly sophisticated strategies for adjusting the acreage sown with each of the demesne crops. In formulating their cropping schedules from year to year, they wisely took account of a range of factors: movements in market price, fluctuations in yield, changing consumption requirements, and even weather conditions. This, of course, has extremely important implications for our understanding of economic mentalities and agricultural development in the Middle Ages. However, it is equally significant that the two decades from 1410 to 1429 were instead characterized by the near-total absence of such strategies. By this time, the range of external stimuli to which reeves usually responded were seemingly ignored. Wheat may now have dominated the farm’s income, but the acreage sown with wheat was almost entirely unrelated to fluctuations in its market price. Nor was there any relationship between the relative price and acreage of wheat and mixtill, as there had been at the turn of the fifteenth century. By this stage, admittedly, mixtill was produced almost entirely for consumption, but neither was the acreage sown with the crop adjusted in line with consumption requirements. The acreage under the pure cash crops bere and dredge was no longer responsive to changes in market price either, and it is even difficult to find a 15

Fifteenth-century landlords are sometimes portrayed as having to choose simply between leasing a demesne and keeping it in hand to supply the needs of the household. At Wisbech, however, wheat, bere, dredge, cattle, and wool were all produced primarily for the market at this time; even adult pigs were, without exception, sold rather than transferred elsewhere on the estate during this period, generating an average income of 34s. a year.


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consistent relationship between the acreage sown with oats and patterns of consumption. Although it was usually still the case that the acreage under each crop varied from year to year, this was now more a matter of luck than judgement, determined, it seems, largely by the size of the field that was due to be cropped in the rotation sequence. For instance, mixtill was now cropped in a three-course rotation, and generally in the same fields: 28 acres were sown at Inham in 1413 and 1416 and, following an expansion in demesne arable here, 36 acres in 1419 and 37 acres in 1422. In fact, at another stage of the rotation—in 1414, 1417, 1420, and 1423—26 acres of mixtill were sown on each occasion. This growing inflexibility is also implicit in the changing use of small parcels of land. Between 1396 and 1407 parcels of mixtill of fewer than 10 acres in a field were sown on eight occasions, suggesting careful field management based on a judicious assessment of the most effective crop combination, but thereafter mixtill was only sown in larger parcels, all of which exceeded 10 acres. As Table 6.1 shows, the transition to a standardized cropping schedule can clearly be traced in the case of bere.16 This cropping sequence was basically organized around the four-course rotations followed on Adgerestoncroft and part of Nymendole, interspersed with the planting of a series of other fields at different stages of a three-course rotation: first Cotecroft, then Podilcroft, Gilberdesdole, and Fenlond. This switching of fields was required in order to juggle the coexistence of two different types of rotation: bere could be sown at Cotecroft in 1414/15, but not in 1417/18 and 1420/1 as this would have disrupted the four-course rotation at Adgerestoncroft and Nymendole (2). This might initially appear very flexible, but by the late 1410s reeves were not only sowing the same acreage in the four-course part of the rotation, but were also replacing fields in the three-course part of the rotation with others of exactly the same size. The use of subdivided fields also changed: prior to 1413/14 bere was usually sown on fields that were divided between more than one crop; but from then on, all the fields, bar Adgerestoncroft, were simply sown to their full extent. Consequently, the acreage planted with bere in the late 1410s and early 1420s ended up on a fixed cycle: in the eight years from 1416/17 this was two series of 20–17–22–22 acres. 16

Almost exactly the same transition affected the cultivation of dredge.


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Table 6.1. The transition to standardized cropping of bere at Wisbech Barton, 1412–1424 (acres) Accounting year

Fields sown with bere Four-course rotation

1412/13 1413/14 1414/15 1415/16 1416/17 1417/18 1418/19 1419/20 1420/1 1421/2 1422/3 1423/4

Three-course rotation

Adgerestoncroft 25 Nymendole (2) 17 Cotecroft 12 Podilcroft 20 Adgerestoncroft 20 Nymendole (2) 17 Podilcroft 22 Gilberdesdole 22 Adgerestoncroft 20 Nymendole (2) 17 Gilberdesdole 22 Fenlond 22

Notes: In 1417/18 and 1421/2 Nymendole (2) was labelled ‘Crucem’. As Map 2.2 shows, the section of Nymendole belonging to the manor of Wisbech Barton abutted the parish boundary between Wisbech St Peter (in which Wisbech Barton lay) and Wisbech St Mary; ‘Crucem’ probably refers to a cross marking the parish boundary. Source: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8.

Even wheat was planted with the same disregard for the market, with its acreage seemingly reliant solely on the availability of fields.17 In 1416, 1419, and 1422, for example, the planting of winter-sown crops was restricted to certain fields: mixtill was sown at Inham; wheat at Sybaldesholm, Smalemedwe, and Hirnefeld (2); and either wheat or bere (and, in one instance, dredge) at Podilcroft, Nymendole (2), and Adgerestoncroft. The extent of wheat cultivation in these years was determined by the use of these last three fields. In 1416 Adgerestoncroft was fallowed and bere was sown at Podilcroft, leaving Nymendole (2) to be sown with wheat. Three years later, Nymendole (2) was left fallow and bere was sown at Podilcroft again, leaving Adgerestoncroft for wheat. In 1422 the regular four-course rotation on Nymendole (2) and Adgerestoncroft meant that the former was sown with bere and the latter with 17

The acreage under oats was determined in much the same way, according to which fields were unoccupied by other crops.

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dredge, leaving Podilcroft to be sown with wheat.18 Despite rising prices and a higher proportion of grain reaching the market place, reeves were now lazier in their decision-making and much less alert to the potential opportunities for increasing profit. It comes as no surprise, therefore, to find that financial returns per acre at Wisbech showed no signs of increase in this period, remaining unchanged at an average of 45d. per acre. At the same time, the cost of cultivating this demesne was rising, particularly after 1422, when roughly half of the remaining customary labour services were relaxed and a larger number of permanent staff and casual workers therefore needed to be taken on.19 This combination of stable gross returns but rising costs cannot but have been influential when the decision to lease the demesne at Wisbech was eventually taken. Yet while one cannot quibble with this decision, the issue that needs to be addressed is whether more responsive management by the Wisbech reeves—in terms of either reducing costs or generating higher overall returns from the land—could have made the continuation of demesne farming a significantly more attractive option. The financial impact of managerial ossification certainly cannot be ignored. In previous periods reeves had been amazingly successful at matching year-to-year adjustments in sown acreage with subsequent changes in gross returns per acre, but in the 1410s and 1420s this success petered out.20 Indeed, out of the six annual changes to the cropping schedule between 1414 and 1420, the acreage under what turned out to be the most valuable winter-sown crop was reduced on four occasions and held constant in the other two, while the acreage under what turned out to be the least valuable winter-sown crop was increased on four occasions and held constant in one. In fact, had the acreage under wheat, mixtill, bere, and dredge simply been kept at its average value for this period the farm would have made more 18 Similarly, the nucleus of wheat cultivation in 1414, 1417, and 1420 was Fourscoreacres, with the addition of Gilberdesdole in 1414, Gilberdesdole plus 10 spare acres at Adgerestoncroft in 1417, and Nymendole (2) in 1420. 19 In the years 1402–6 cultivation costs had been approximately 24d. per acre, but they had risen to 29d. per acre by the early 1420s, and 37d. per acre by the late 1420s. The rise in the 1420s would have been offset to some extent by the money received from the commutation of labour services, but even so costs still increased steadily. 20 Significantly, the only time in these years when changes in the area under wheat corresponded to movements in returns per acre on the crop was in the first few years of this period, up to 1414.


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money than it actually did. The difference was only about 4s. a year, but since the same calculation for the 1360s and 1370s suggested that flexible cropping added approximately £3 per year to the farm’s income, the cost of indifferent management in this respect was effectively as much as £3 4s. every year. But this is not all that is revealed by looking at financial returns per acre: even more disastrously for the farm, the expansion in acreage under wheat at the expense of mixtill did not pay off. At first sight, it looks to have been a sensible change, for it mirrored the long-term shift in the relative price of the two crops.21 Indeed, between 1405, when the number of acres sown with wheat first started to grow, and 1412, by which time the change was complete, the movement in returns fully justified the decision. But thereafter things started to go badly wrong. The mean return on wheat may have remained constant at 51d. per acre compared to the period 1375–1409, but the return on mixtill rose by 37 per cent to 68d. per acre. In fact, the return per acre on mixtill exceeded that on wheat in twelve out of fourteen years between 1413 and 1429, and in five of those years the difference was more than double. This stark divergence was caused by trends in productivity: yields per acre of mixtill rose by 42 per cent; yields of wheat, on the other hand, only nudged up by 8 per cent.22 But while earlier reeves had taken account of relative productivity when making decisions about crop choice, this crucial aspect was overlooked by the 1410s and 1420s. A hypothetical model spells out the financial implications very clearly. The ratio between the gross financial returns per acre on wheat and mixtill can be used to calculate what might be thought of as the optimal balance between the two crops in terms of acreage;23 21 Having reached a peak of 86 per cent of the sale price of wheat in the early 1350s, the relative value of mixtill gradually slid to 63 per cent by the early 15th century, a clear indication again of increased demand for better-quality bread grain. 22 Yields per acre of mixtill were also much more stable than those of wheat at this time: over the period 1314–1429 as a whole, the coefficients of variation are 35.1 for wheat and 28.8 for mixtill; but in the seventeen recorded harvests in the 1410s and 1420s the gap was considerably wider, with coefficients of 36.2 for wheat and 23.7 for mixtill. In the 14th century yield stability contributed to the choice of crops, but by the early 15th century this seems to have been of less importance to reeves. 23 For example, if the gross return per acre on mixtill was twice that of wheat, then the optimal acreage is taken as mixtill occupying twice the amount of land as wheat. Of course, more money could have been made in this instance by not sowing mixtill at all, but it is assumed that farm managers would have sown both crops come what may. In each year the combined acreage under the two crops in the hypothetical model mirrors the combined acreage that was actually sown.

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essentially, this is what competent reeves would have been aiming to achieve. During the period 1393 to 1412 the difference between the optimal acreage and the actual acreage under the two crops was very small, equivalent to ‘lost’ revenue of just 6s. 6d. per year. This astonishingly good return lends significant weight to the argument that reeves managed the demesne with extraordinary tightness at the turn of the fifteenth century. However, in the years 1413 to 1429 the same calculation shows that the actual acreage sown with these crops was so far wide of the optimal acreage that the demesne was effectively haemorrhaging over 100s. each year. Assuming that yields and prices would have remained the same, the difference between the two suggests that poor decision-making was costing the demesne a further £4 13s. 9d. every year. Adding this to the loss from inflexible cropping indicates that the arable sector at Wisbech could have made nearly £8 per year more than it actually did during the last phase of direct cultivation. Given an actual income from arable farming of just under £22 per year, this sector was operating at only about three-quarters of its potential. It was not the only reason for the collapse in demesne farming, but the yawning gap that suddenly developed between potential and actual financial returns must have played an important part in precipitating it. This sudden turnaround in managerial competence explains, and is itself explained by, another striking change in the period. As Figure 6.2 illustrates, the breakdown in cropping strategies and consequent loss of income coincided with an unusually fast turnover of reeves. Until 1410, with the exception of the immediate aftermath of the Black Death, reeves regularly remained in office for between three and seven years, extending to at least twelve years in the case of John de Tydd, who held office from January 1367 to at least September 1378. However, between September 1410 and September 1429 the majority of reeves were retained for only one or two years, a total of twelve reeves holding office in this period. This fast turnover is presumably indicative of an inability to secure sufficiently skilled farm managers at a time when more fruitful opportunities for skilled men were comparatively plentiful and the mobility of unfree peasants had increased. It seems, at least, that it was not merely discontinuity in personnel that prompted the adoption of more conservative methods of arable management, for cropping strategies during the early 1350s had been highly


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12

Number of years in office

10 8 6 4 2

1430

1420

1410

1400

1390

1380

1370

1360

1350

1340

1330

1320

0

Fig. 6.2. Number of years in office of each reeve of Wisbech Barton, 1320–1430. The placement of each column indicates the first year served by each reeve. Source: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8.

responsive to price changes despite the fast turnover of reeves at that time. In fact, there is evidence that these reeves were indeed sacked because of their inability to formulate more profitable cropping strategies. In the previous chapter, the success of cropping strategies from one year to the next was assessed by comparing the actual mean gross return per acre in each year with the notional return had cropping remained unchanged from the previous year. The same calculation for the 1410s and 1420s reveals that adjustments to the cropping schedule at this time resulted in a notional loss of revenue in eleven out of fourteen years. As before, there is a strong correlation between years of notional gain and the retention of reeves, and years of notional losses and the dismissal of reeves. Notional gains of 5.1d. per acre, 1.4d. per acre, and 0.1d. per acre coincide with the retention as reeve of Robert Case in 1412, Thomas Meyere in 1417, and John Trowan in 1423. Meanwhile, notional losses of 1.5d. per acre, 2.3d. per acre, 2.5d. per acre, 2.3d. per acre, 2.1d. per acre, and 17.5d. per acre coincide with the last year as reeve of Martin Dousing in 1410, Robert Case in 1413, Stephen

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Deye in 1414, John Worthen in 1416, Thomas Meyere in 1418, and John Manning in 1427.24 It is no exaggeration to conclude that this was a period of managerial crisis; given which, the decision to lease the demesne was probably only a matter of time.

Crop Rotation and Field Management In fact, although the Wisbech demesne remained in direct cultivation until 1429, the decision to lease seems already to have been taken by 1425. The end of John Fordham’s thirty-seven-year incumbency as bishop of Ely that year would naturally have provided a moment for reflection and reassessment, and it must have seemed a good time to start looking for an appropriate lessee. The recent rise in the cost of cultivation would certainly have made this decision easier, but the apparent inability of reeves to exploit the economic situation to the full would not have escaped the attention of the bishop’s council either. Certainly, Wisbech agriculture was thereafter characterized by an air of retrenchment: dairy farming was abandoned; the cash crops bere and dredge were excluded from the cropping schedule;25 the acreage under wheat remained constant for three years in succession; and increasing quantities of land were either leased or left as waste. Moreover, 1423–4 was the last year in which the Wisbech reeves listed the fields in which the different crops were sown, suggesting that they no longer felt the need (and were no longer instructed) to keep a detailed record of such matters. Nevertheless, the fifteen consecutive cropping schedules that survive for the years 1410–24 reveal that the pattern of arable land use underwent significant change at this time, and add another layer to our understanding of the quality of decision-making in the last phase of direct cultivation. In particular, the cropping schedules 24

As in the previous period, marginal deficits of less than a penny per acre seem to have been overlooked, for notional losses of 0.4d. per acre and 0.8d. per acre coincide with the retention of John Worthen in 1415 and Reginald Lowyn in 1421. There are two exceptions—the end of Reginald Lowyn’s reeveship in 1422 and that of William Howlet in 1428, which coincided with notional losses of 0.7d. per acre and 0.5d. per acre respectively—but it is notable that these both came at a time when cultivation costs were much higher than usual. 25 Bere and dredge were dropped from the cropping schedule in 1425–6, though the latter was temporarily reinstated again in 1426–7, before being permanently left out.


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shed considerable light on the divergent trends in the productivity of wheat and mixtill that played such a critical role in determining the financial return from these crops. The 1410s and 1420s saw a distinct westward movement in the use of fields for arable cultivation. Several fields on the eastern flank of the manor that had been at the heart of arable exploitation for much of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries were laid down to pasture, including the larger part of Smalemedwe and the field of Lythesmedwe, from which crops were last harvested in 1411 and 1414 respectively.26 This was balanced by the expansion and reorganization of cropping on fields further west: the cultivated part of Inham was gradually increased from 20 acres in 1407–8 to 36 acres in 1415–16; cropping at Hirnefeld was extended from 42 acres in the years leading up to 1410 to 68 acres by 1416–17; and the two main parcels of Nymendole, which had been sown as separate entities during the 1390s and 1400s, were amalgamated and expanded to 70 acres. This geographical development gave physical embodiment to the shift in emphasis from arable to pastoral husbandry, for it had the effect of freeing up land close to the manorial courtyard for use as pasture while pushing arable crops to the more distant parts of the farm,27 but the reasons behind the change probably had more to do with the needs of the arable sector. Part of the explanation may well have been that the easternmost fields, situated on light silt soil that suffered more than any other part of the farm from dense weed growth, were simply less productive by this period. However, the immediate trigger seems to have been a further threat of sea inundation. After two or three decades of relative neglect, the banks and ditches around the manor were doubtless in a state of some disrepair. In this context, the sudden flurry of expenditure on them between 1407 and 1410 smacks of urgency, and this impression is confirmed by the fact that in 1408–9 four men, including the current reeve of Wisbech, 26 The field called Southale, which it has proved impossible to locate, was also put down to pasture in 1408. Although it was leased for pasture in 1408/9, the reeve noted that this was only because the lord’s sheep were at Tylneyesmethe that year; it was duly not leased thereafter, and in 1412 Thomas Tuliet was contracted to make a ‘stowe’ at Southale for the lord’s sheep. 27 Parts of Smalemedwe had previously been leased, but ‘never henceforth [from 1409] because it was reserved for the lord’s sheep’; in 1416–17 a carpenter was hired to mend a gate there; and two years later a pig-house was made which included the ‘new enclosure’ at Smalemedwe.

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a former reeve, and the bailiff of Waldersey, were paid to ‘watch the north shores of Wisbech for three days and three nights’; presumably to provide early warning in the event of a breach by the surging sea. Tellingly, several fields on the eastern, seaward side of the manor were not sown to their full extent in the following year.28 Expanding cultivation further west was clearly appropriate in the circumstances, even though the pressing need to maintain ditches around these western fields, which were themselves prone to flooding after periods of heavy rainfall, proved costly in the long term.29 Less sensible, however, was the way in which these fields were used during the 1410s and early 1420s, especially in terms of the cultivation of wheat and mixtill. Table 6.2 sets out the fields in which these crops were sown over the twelve-year periods 1401–12 and 1413–24, listing the fields in roughly geographical order from east to west. The last column of the table gives the cereal yield index for each of the fields as a guide to their performance. Notably, the indices for Inham and Hirnefeld suggest that they were both comparatively productive, but reeves in the period 1413–24 bizarrely chose to devote them to mixtill to a much greater extent than wheat: indeed, over a third of mixtill was sown at Inham, but no wheat at all; and while an increasing amount of wheat was sown at Hirnefeld, the change for mixtill was even greater. Instead, more wheat than mixtill was planted on some of the eastern fields that generally performed badly after the Black Death, including Podilcroft, Smalemedwe, and Adgerestoncroft. Equally strange was the use of Fourscoreacres, which although further west almost invariably produced very poor yields: a large proportion of mixtill and a small proportion of wheat had been sown here in the years 1401–12, but subsequent reeves turned this around entirely, sowing over a quarter of all wheat there but much less mixtill. In short, the management of fields at this time favoured mixtill, now sown almost exclusively for on-farm consumption, above wheat, which as we have seen had become the key cash crop. The nature of crop rotations tells a similar story. As in the previous period, most of the fields at Wisbech were still cropped on a regular three-course rotation, though two fields—Adgerestoncroft 28 Only 70 per cent of Adgerestoncroft, 81 per cent of Lythesmedwe and Podilcroft, and 88 per cent of Smalemedwe (2) were sown. 29 Indeed, at least 100s. was spent on scouring ditches around Inham between 1414 and 1427.


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Table 6.2. The distribution of wheat and mixtill sowing at Wisbech Barton, 1401–1424 Field

Lythesmedwe Podilcroft Smalemedwe Cotecroft Adgerestoncroft Sybaldesholm Gilberdesdole Fenlond Southale Fourscoreacres Nymendole Hirnefeld Inham

Wheat

Mixtill

Cereal yield index

1401–12

1413–24

1401–12

1413–24

11.0 9.1 12.8 1.1 7.5 4.4 8.1 1.5 0.0 5.3 34.8 4.4 0.0

2.4 4.0 4.3 2.4 8.1 3.6 4.3 4.0 0.0 26.6 25.0 15.4 0.0

0.0 0.0 6.6 16.1 1.1 0.0 4.8 7.9 13.3 38.5 1.0 5.4 5.3

0.0 0.0 0.0 25.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 6.1 0.0 7.2 0.0 25.6 35.8

— 33 6 7 3 7 2 4 — 14 14 14 13

Note: The figures for the cereal yield index are the average results for each field during the period 1353–1423. Source: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8.

and one of the sections of Nymendole—maintained more intensive four-course rotations.30 However, a significant change had taken place in the implementation of these four-course rotations, for a second winter-sown crop was usually now sown in the third stage of the cycle, producing the sequence winter–spring–winter–fallow; the winter crop in question was invariably wheat.31 For instance, the rotation followed at Nymendole (2) in the years 1414–17 and 1418–21 was bere–dredge–wheat–fallow. Overall, in fact, 12 per cent of the wheat sown in the period 1410–24 was planted in fields that had already yielded two successive cereal crops; this must also have constrained wheat yields to some extent. Furthermore, there are signs that this rotation was simply too heavy for the land at Adgerestoncroft, suggesting that wheat yields suffered even more. Figure 6.3 shows the cereal yield indices for Adgerestoncroft and 30

The demesne had 87 acres of land at Nymendole, 17 of which carried the fourcourse rotation. 31 At Adgerestoncroft the third cycle of the rotation was frequently divided between winter- and spring-sown crops, though the former was always dominant: for example, the sequence of cropping there between 1417 and 1420 was bere and wheat–dredge and oats–wheat and oats–fallow.


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Cereal yield index for bere and dredge

40 30 20 10 0 1400

1405

1410

1415

1420

1425

–10 –20 –30 Nymendole (2)

Adgerestoncroft

Fig. 6.3. Performance of Adgerestoncroft and Nymendole (2) in the early fifteenth century. Source: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8.

the relevant part of Nymendole during the early fifteenth century, based on the relative performance of the crops of bere and dredge that were planted there. Apart from anything else, the graph illustrates the general difference in productivity between fields on the eastern side of the manor (as Adgerestoncroft was) and those on the western side (as Nymendole was). But on top of this the performance of Adgerestoncroft progressively declined; it was not just the intensity of the rotation, for crops at Nymendole continued to yield comparatively well, but in the case of Adgerestoncroft the land simply deteriorated, a situation which reeves were no longer able enough to spot and rectify. Although less than 10 per cent of wheat was sown at Adgerestoncroft in the years 1413–24, the performance of the field would further have constrained its productivity. Nevertheless, while yields of wheat lagged well behind those of mixtill, they still rose. On the other hand, yields of bere and dredge fell. But then roughly a quarter of each crop was sown at Adgerestoncroft and a further 18 per cent of bere and 13 per cent of dredge was sown at the


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comparatively infertile Podilcroft. Reeves, it seems, paid little heed to the relative performance of their fields and their major cash crops at a time when tight management was absolutely essential if the farm was to continue as a sustainable enterprise.

Agrarian Techniques and the Maintenance of Soil Fertility The use of agrarian techniques provides further evidence that Wisbech reeves in this period were generally less capable than their predecessors. As with other crops, the acreage under legumes was no longer adjusted in line with the objectives of cropping, in this case consumption requirements,32 but was instead dictated primarily by a more regular pattern of cultivation. Indeed, the acreage under legumes remained at 6 or 7 acres in eight out of eleven years between 1417 and 1428; on several occasions, the acreage was in fact reduced after inadequate harvests, resulting in a similar shortfall of fodder in the following year. Moreover, a significant change occurred in the use of legumes at Adgerestoncroft. During the first half of the 1410s, as in the previous decade, farm managers planted legumes on this field in support of the intensive four-course rotation that was followed here.33 But thereafter, legumes were usually sown on fields that carried three-course rotations and, invariably, immediately prior to a fallow year. The timing of this change, and the fact that the crop was now sown on fields adjacent to the newly enclosed Smalemedwe, is suggestive of a link with the rapid expansion of the dairy herd: plausibly, what little acreage there was under legumes was now being used to improve the quality and quantity of fallow pasture. But in so doing, the reeves seem to have overlooked the impact that this would have on the ability of Adgerestoncroft to support an intensive rotation; the performance of this field was probably affected by a number of factors, and the use of legumes was one of them. The way in which labour was applied also casts doubt on the ability of the Wisbech reeves to read economic situations as adroitly as their predecessors. Even if wages were no longer spiralling 32 On average, 64 per cent of available legumes were consumed as fodder by demesne livestock in the 1410s and 1420s. 33 For example, the rotation at Adgerestoncroft between 1413 and 1416 was bere and wheat–dredge and legumes–wheat and oats–fallow.

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upwards, labour was still extremely costly and needed to be used judiciously. The slight recovery in grain prices meant that some increase in labour inputs was probably justified, but any excessive expenditure would potentially have been ruinous. So while a slight rise in weeding inputs at Wisbech was economically sustainable, the occasional increase in the intensity of weeding to a level that would not have been out of place in the early fourteenth century was rash.34 Even more so, a huge amount of time was invested in fallow ploughing during this period. Of course, the Wisbech demesne was to some extent sheltered from the full force of the market by the number of customary labour services that the bishop of Ely was still able to enforce, but in order to minimize any unnecessary expenditure these also needed to be deployed carefully. However, customary labour inputs in fallow ploughing increased from an annual mean of 134 man-days (0.79 man-days per fallow acre) in the years 1397– 1406 to 237 man-days (1.6 man-days per fallow acre) between 1410 and 1421. Specific references to fallow ploughing disappear from the accounts after the relaxation of labour services in 1422, but it seems that it was performed equally assiduously during the remainder of the decade, since the number and remuneration of famuli ploughmen increased from three at 8s. per annum each in 1421, to eight at 13s. 4d. each in most years thereafter. It appears that the sole reason for the growing intensity of fallow ploughing was simply the expansion of wheat cultivation, for correlating the acreage under wheat with the number of man-days spent fallow ploughing for the twenty-one years in the period 1401–21 produces a coefficient of 0.795, which is significant at a 0.1 per cent level of probability. This was exactly the same strategy that had been used for determining the amount of fallow ploughing in the early fourteenth century. At that time it was appropriate; but by the early fifteenth century the huge number of labour services that this swallowed up could profitably have been reallocated, in order to lower the overall costs of cultivation, to tasks—such as weeding—that still relied heavily on hired labour.35 Probably the most important aspect of the use of agrarian techniques in this period was the management of manure. This is worthy 34 Weeding inputs during this period were usually maintained at between 70 and 100 man-days per 100 sown acres, but in 1420, 1423, and 1427 inputs increased to between 119 and 143 man-days. 35 If, as seems likely, the most benefit was derived by mixtill, then the inappropriateness of the reeves’ actions is further emphasized.


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of more detailed consideration for several reasons. First, because renewed interest in cattle-ranching at Wisbech in the 1410s and 1420s inevitably delivered a substantial and unprecedented increase in the availability of manure. The number of livestock units on the demesne averaged 147.3 during these years, an increase of 42 per cent from the level attained in the period 1376–1409; as a result, the mean stocking density per 100 sown acres rose by almost 50 per cent to 53.4 units. Secondly, the historiography of later medieval England is, so to speak, full of it. Because of the key role of manure in the maintenance of soil fertility, rising livestock numbers throughout the economy of post-Black Death England should have resulted in higher yields.36 However, as several authors have noted, there was often a lack of correlation between increased stocking densities and yields at this time,37 a finding which could be taken as bolstering Postan’s argument that soil fertility had plunged to such depths at the turn of the fourteenth century that the soil was irreparably damaged for several generations to come. Thirdly, the study of this debate in microcosm at Wisbech is of particular significance because of the unique data on the use of manure that are contained in the Wisbech accounts. Correlating stocking densities with crop yields on this demesne suggests that, for the first time, there was no link between the availability of manure and year-to-year fluctuations in productivity; results from previous periods were remarkably consistent in this respect, but this was all but lost in the 1410s and 1420s.38 Despite the general regularity of crop rotations, which presumably facilitated pasturing arrangements, and the changing cultivation of legumes, which was probably intended to improve fallow pasture, grazing appears to have been less well integrated with arable husbandry by this time. There are no clear examples of convertible husbandry being adopted. Instead, several fields were enclosed as permanent pasture, coinciding with the expansion of the dairy herd: as well as the examples given earlier, new gates were made for the 36 Close links between stocking densities and yields in this period are proposed in Farmer, ‘Grain Yields on the Winchester Manors’, 563–4; id., ‘Crop Yields’, 136–7; and Stephenson, ‘Productivity of Medieval Sheep’, 176–87. 37 Campbell, ‘Land, Labour, Livestock’, 163–4; Thornton, ‘Determinants of Land Productivity’, 200; Mate, ‘Agricultural Technology’, 271. 38 Yields of bere have previously shown a uniformly strong correlation with total stocking densities, with coefficients of 0.590 (1314–48), 0.568 (1349–75), and 0.612 (1376–1409), but between 1410 and 1423 the coefficient was just 0.035.

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suggestively named Calvescroft in 1415 and Couleylond in 1419, both of which seem to have been used exclusively for grazing.39 Secondly, sheep were increasingly grazed away from the demesne during this period, reducing the amount of usable manure. Between 1417 and 1424 payments were frequently made for expenses incurred by drovers taking the flock to the Norfolk manors of Walton and Walpole for winter grazing, occasionally via the aptly named Gresemere. Wisbech High Fen was also used for pasturing sheep again in the late 1420s, and in 1429 the demesne sheep were even grazed by the side of the road leading to Leverington. But the most important evidence of all is for the carting and spreading of muck by hand, for stall-feeding plainly played an integral part in the management of cattle at Wisbech.40 Expenditure on carters hired specifically to shift muck from farmyard to field increased enormously during this period, in line with the huge rise in livestock units: between 1403 and 1412 an annual average of thirty man-days was used for this task, but this increased to sixty-seven man-days between 1413 and 1418, and seventy-nine man-days between 1419 and 1424. The big decision that reeves had to make was what to do with this manure: spread or not spread? Figure 6.4 compares livestock units with measures of muck spread between 1401 and 1421 and reveals that the amount of muck spread on the land after 1412 in no way corresponded to the rise in available manure. The average quantity of muck spread each year did increase slightly from 1,217 measures in the period 1401–12 to 1,489 measures between 1413 and 1421, but this hardly matches the rise in livestock numbers, and was in any case practically the same as the 1,472 measures spread annually in the twenty-five years after the Black Death, when livestock numbers were much lower.41 In fact, exactly the same amount of manure was spread in 1402, 39 Thornton found similar evidence of a rise in enclosed pasturing at Rimpton in the late 14th century: Thornton, ‘Determinants of Land Productivity’, 200. There is one exception at Wisbech: the expansion of the cropped area at Inham in the years 1410–17 may well have included land that had been used as pasture during the 1400s. 40 Extra hay and straw was purchased in virtually every year between 1415 and 1423, including 7,000 sheaves of fodder and straw in 1416 at a cost of 46s. 4d., and 3,000 sheaves of fodder and five carts of straw in 1423 for 33s. 6d. 41 Indeed, the mean quantity of muck spread per livestock unit fell to just 9.1 measures in the years 1413–21; by comparison, this figure had been 24.9 measures per livestock unit before the Black Death, 14.3 measures in the quarter-century following the Black Death, and 12.4 measures in the period 1376–1409.


179

200

Units (measures of muck have been divided by 25)

180

Livestock units

160 140 120 100 80 60 Muck spread

40 20

1421

1419

1417

1415

1413

1411

1409

1407

1405

1403

1401

0

Fig. 6.4. Livestock units and muck spread at Wisbech Barton, 1401–1421. Source: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8.

1408, 1416, 1418 and 1421, while more muck was spread in 1405 than in six out of nine years between 1413 and 1421. While the increasing amount of dung produced in the 1410s and 1420s was carted away from the manorial farmyard, it seems that much of it was subsequently left in a pile and not used to fertilize the soil. These dung heaps may well have been pilfered by local peasants; if not, they would just have been left to rot. It is open to dispute whether leaving much of this extra manure on the side of the fields was good management or not. For some historians, the neglect of available manure in this way would seem unbelievably crass. However, contrary to much of the argument in this chapter, the Wisbech reeves were probably right, in economic terms, not to throw labour at the task. It would have proved extremely expensive to hire extra workers, judging by the fact that hired labour for muck-spreading cost 41=2 d. per 100 measures in 1427, an expense that the level of grain prices simply did not justify. Moreover, additional soil nitrogen would have promoted further growth of weeds as well as corn and would thus, to some extent, have been counter-productive. But whether good management or not, this evidence demonstrates conclusively that the extra manure

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that was available on many farms in this period was not necessarily all used. In so doing it provides an excellent illustration of the wider technological point that knowledge of a process or a technique does not necessarily mean that it was applied. Nevertheless, wise managerial decisions seem to have been the exception rather than the rule during this last phase of direct cultivation; for the lord, leasing probably could not have come quick enough.

Livestock Husbandry As we have seen, the most important development in pastoral husbandry during the last phase of direct cultivation at Wisbech was the expansion of the dairy herd, which reached fifty-one to seventyfour head of cattle between 1416 and 1424, consisting of one bull, twenty-four to thirty-two cows, and between twenty-two and fortyone immature cattle. Table 6.3 shows the final balance sheet for cattle-farming, from the first building of a new dairy and the purchase of cows in 1413 to the eventual sale of the stock thirteen or fourteen years later. Income came mainly from lactage and the sale of cattle, and some allowance has been made for the supply of oxen that would otherwise have been bought at market, for in the years 1416–24 breeding accounted for 47 per cent of the oxen that were acquired.42 The construction of the new dairy was certainly a major expense,43 but the largest cost was the loss of income that had been made from the leasing of pasture: a maximum of only 15 acres was leased each year in the period 1415–26, compared to an annual mean of 85 acres in the years 1408–9; likewise, in the late 1420s, after the experiment with dairying had been given up, the quantity of land leased returned to 63–87 acres. Notably, too, the provision of veterinary care appears to have become a professional specialization by this time. Over a period of ten years the person who was invariably called upon to administer to the needs of the Wisbech cattle was Thomas Sanndres: he healed five cows from throat disease in 1414–15; bled the lord’s cows and oxen in 1417–18; and in four consecutive years in the early 1420s was called upon to cure them of ‘lungeseke’, presumably the same disease described 42 Breeding also accounted for 63 per cent of the cows and bulls that were acquired in these years, but they have been omitted from the profit calculation. 43 Sherlock, ‘Wisbech Barton’s Farm Buildings’.


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Table 6.3. The profitability of cattle-farming at Wisbech Barton, 1413–1426 Annual income

Annual expenditure

Nature

Value (s.)

Nature

Value (s.)

Lactage Cattle sold Oxen supplied Carcasses and hides sold

125.1 86.0 26.5 1.4

New dairy (depreciation) Lease of grassland forgone Ditching at Couleylond Cattle bought Hay and straw bought Oats for calves Stipend of dairymaid Grain for dairymaid Veterinary costs Clearing away extra dung

Total Net annual profit

239.0

20.0 55.5 4.9 40.0 15.4 5.7 4.9 15.1 4.3 14.2 180.4 58.6


by Fitzherbert in 1534 as the ‘longe soughte’.44 Yet, in spite of the various costs, the demesne seems to have made a clear profit from cattle husbandry of just under £3 a year. This, at least, clawed back some of the losses that were incurred elsewhere on the farm. Even so, the management of the pastoral sector at Wisbech appears to have been beset by problems at this time, raising the question of whether it could have been even more profitable still. For example, the health of the cattle gradually deteriorated. Although the reproduction rate of the Wisbech cows cannot be directly calculated, since they were effectively leased to the dairy for both milking and calving, an indication of herd fertility can be gained from the proportion of cows not leased due to barrenness: while just 5 per cent of cows were recorded as barren in the years 1413–18, this had increased to 9 per cent by the period 1419–24. This may in part have been due to a slight increase in the proportion of young cows in the breeding herd,45 but it is notable that reeves 44 Fitzherbert, Book of Husbandry, 54. Fitzherbert advised cutting the dewlap and inserting powdered feathergrass; at Wisbech in 1410–11, salt was used to heal the oxen. 45 Possibly as a result of brucellosis (contagious abortion), from which the older cows would have gained some immunity: Atkin, ‘Land Use and Management’, 7.

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also became increasingly reluctant to streamline the herd through the sale of barren cows: in the years 1413–18, five cows were sold because of their inability to stock and a further three because they were old; but from 1419 to 1424 only old cows appear to have been sold. The retention of barren cows must have added significantly to costs without generating much income. Similar signs that the management of livestock became less adept during this period can be seen from the health of other livestock. The local horse specialist Walter Faro had to be called upon on several occasions in the early 1420s to deal with persistent outbreaks of farcy, a bacterial infection revealed by ulcers on the skin or in the throat.46 Death rates among pigs fluctuated wildly from year to year, rising to 24 per cent in 1415, 32 per cent in 1418, 25 per cent the following year, and 27 per cent in 1423. Patterns of mortality among sheep changed as well. Judging by references to bald sheep between 1414 and 1417, and in 1422, 1424, and 1429, sheep scab was still rife in the flock, but in contrast to the turn of the fifteenth century there was no respite, since the flock was now almost entirely self-sufficient. The level of mortality was relatively high and death rates rose sharply in the late 1420s, to 22 per cent in 1427/8 and 37 per cent in the following year. With the exception of the drowning incident in 1398, the death rate in 1428/9 was higher than at any other time covered by the accounts, a disaster that may well have triggered the final leasing of the demesne. However, perhaps the clearest manifestation of a comparative lack of accomplishment in pastoral management at this time was the fact that several sheep were attacked and killed by dogs in 1417 and 1428. Since the auditors subsequently charged these deaths to the reeve in the form of a super compotum sale, it seems that they, too, blamed these deaths on the quality of management. The productivity of the Wisbech sheep also seems to have been affected. In contrast to the turn of the fifteenth century, the mean weight of fleeces sold at Wisbech settled into a fairly consistent pattern, ranging from 1.86 lb to 1.98 lb per fleece in seven out of eleven years between 1412 and 1428. Even though sheep scab was still in evidence during these years, there was no longer a link 46 The costs of maintaining horses also grew, for they were provided with a more generous allowance of oats when harrowing at spring sowing: 6 or more quarters of oats were provided for them each year between 1413 and 1426, compared to 4 quarters or less on similar occasions at the turn of the 15th century.


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between lower fleece weights and years of apparent outbreaks, as there had been in previous decades. The most plausible reason for this change was a substantial increase in the provision of fodder for sheep, particularly lambs: only 3 quarters of legumes had been set aside for lambs in 1410, equivalent to 14 bushels per 100 lambs at weaning, but by 1412–19 this had risen to 6–8 quarters of legumes, equalling 20–6 bushels per 100 lambs; in fact, by 1424–6, 10–12 quarters of legumes and oats were allocated to them each year, equivalent to 35–42 bushels per 100 lambs. Two carts of hay were also bought for the sustenance of lambs during the winter of 1417–18, and sheep may well have received some of the extra fodder that was purchased at this time ‘for the lord’s livestock’ in general. Until 1415 this was probably a sound decision, for wool prices at that time were comparatively high at 32–40d. per stone. However, when wool prices subsequently slumped to 223=4 –24d. per stone between 1418 and 1428, the economic merit of expanding or even maintaining fodder provision is less clear. Reeves were still responsive to wool prices in some respects, for they reverted to the policy of keeping and selling old wool from 1416 onwards, but it seems that this responsiveness did not extend to fodder provision. In fact, there was sometimes even confusion over the marketing of wool. In the summer of 1420, rather than selling the wool that had been in storage since the previous summer, the reeve instead sold the wool that had been freshly shorn that year, leaving the 1419 clip in storage until it was eventually sold during the following accounting year. By then, however, the wool seems to have dried out to a much greater extent than usual, for when it was eventually sold it weighed an average of just 1.58 lb per fleece. Lambing rates were generally very high in the 1410s and 1420s, averaging over 100 lambs per 100 ewes between 1410 and 1424. But a clear downward trend in lambing success during this period reveals further problems with the management of the sheep flock. As at the turn of the fifteenth century, several young ewes appear to have suffered intermittently from retarded fertility, for reproduction rates again correspond closely to higher mortality among lambs two years earlier, when the young ewes were born. In fact, mortality rates among lambs increased considerably from 1416 onwards, shortly before lambing rates started to decline: from 1410 to 1415 mortality fluctuated in the range 8.6–11.3 per cent, but rose to 13.9–17.1 per cent between 1416 and 1422. This trend in mortality

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was out of step with the rest of the flock, a divergence seemingly caused by a deterioration in the quality of the care provided for lambs: while the total number of lambs born increased substantially during the late 1410s and early 1420s—rising from an annual mean of 235 between 1401 and 1414, to 310 between 1415 and 1422— labour inputs in shepherding remained constant. In fact, correlating annual labour inputs per lamb born, in terms of man-days worked over a six-month period, with annual lamb mortality rates for thirteen years in the period 1410–22 produces a Spearman rank coefficient of 0.702, which is significant at a 1 per cent level of probability. On the only two occasions in the last quarter of the fourteenth century that the number of lambs born exceeded 300, labour inputs were much higher, and the mortality rate among lambs in those years was consequently less than 10 per cent. But in the 1410s and 1420s reeves and shepherds alike seem to have been considerably less responsive to the needs of their livestock, with fertility rates suffering as a result.

Conclusion The chronology of the final phase of direct cultivation at Wisbech is clear. Although two major innovations were made to the running of the farm in the early 1410s, namely a rapid increase in the acreage under wheat and the expansion of the dairy herd, the bishop of Ely’s desire to manage the demesne in this way had seemingly waned by the early 1420s. In part, this appears to have been a simple matter of economics: after a period of revival in the 1410s, the profitability of agriculture had been reduced when a large proportion of customary labour services were relaxed, local trade started to shrink, and prices for grain, wool, and dairy produce wavered again. Indeed, it appears that the decision to lease the demesne in its entirety had already been taken by 1425, at the same time that the long episcopate of Bishop Fordham came to an end; thereafter, cash crops were dropped, dairy farming was abandoned, and reeves even ceased to record the fields in which the crops were sown. But as leasing required farmers who were willing to take on the demesne at a rent acceptable to the bishop, it seems to have taken four years to arrive at a settlement satisfactory to both parties. The virulent outbreaks of sheep murrain in 1427/8 and 1428/9, after which


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considerable expenditure would have been required to restock the demesne, may well have acted as a catalyst in this process, possibly even forcing the bishop to lower the asking price. However, underlying this chronology was a subtle but nonetheless significant deterioration in managerial efficiency, as the rapid turnover in reeves during this period testifies. Cropping strategies became much less sophisticated and the gap between actual and potential gross arable returns widened considerably as a result. The expansion of wheat at the expense of mixtill was financially wrecked by a series of poor decisions about the location of cropping. The spiralling costs of cultivation were exacerbated by the misallocation of available labour resources. In the pastoral sector, barren cows were increasingly retained, sheep were occasionally savaged by dogs, and at times even the marketing of wool became confused. Indeed, rising mortality rates among lambs and falling fertility rates among ewes seem to have been the result of unusual insensitivity to the economic and practical needs of the livestock sector. While there were probably several factors that persuaded the bishop and his advisers to bring direct demesne cultivation at Wisbech to an end, the quality of the reeves that were now available to them must have played a significant part. In fact, the poor performance of farm officials in these years is also implied by comparison of the annual income derived by the bishop in the final decade of direct cultivation with the rent at which the demesne was initially leased. Including produce consumed on the estate, the sale of customary dues, and income from piecemeal leasing, the net annual return from the Wisbech demesne during the early 1420s was approximately £42, dropping to about £27 in the latter half of the decade. Assuming that the bishop was confident of being able to purchase supplies for his household easily and cheaply, leasing the demesne for £48 per annum was clearly a more profitable use of his resources. However, the lessees must have been confident that they could farm the land much more effectively, for they of course had to ensure a return of £48 per year just to break even.47 Unfortunately, scant information survives by which to judge 47 The distinction between reeve and lessee is not an entirely clear-cut one, for one of the two lessees of the Wisbech demesne in 1429/30 was also the lord’s very last reeve. But by the same token, it is noteworthy that the bishop did not secure a lease with either of the other two men who had acted as reeve since the decision to lease had been taken. Moreover, the identity of the other lessee, Thomas Dousing,

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the nature or profitability of agriculture at Wisbech during the remainder of the fifteenth century, though, with generally deteriorating economic conditions, the reduction in the demesne rent to £35 by 1480 suggests that farmers faced some very considerable difficulties at this time. But even this was better than the profit that the Wisbech reeves were able to generate in the last few years of direct cultivation. provides an important reflection on the motor that was driving this deterioration in managerial competence. Thomas was presumably related to, and possibly even the son of, Martin Dousing, who had been reeve of the Wisbech demesne between 1403 and 1410. With Martin an unfree reeve but the next generation of the family a farmer of a demesne, there is more than just a hint of the grasping of an opportunity for economic and social betterment.

PART III

Farm Management in Medieval England


7 Standards of Demesne Farm Management in England The Wisbech evidence clearly undermines the belief that the people who inhabited the medieval countryside were incapable of rational thought or strategic planning. For most of the period covered by these accounts, reeves managed the production and marketing of farm produce in a remarkably sensitive and sophisticated way. Nor were their careful responses to a range of external stimuli merely decorative, for they had a considerable impact on both the revenue generated by this demesne, and the physical yield of its land and livestock. Local unfree peasants they may have been, but these reeves were adept at formulating extremely cunning plans. Yet, though these accounts are exceptionally informative, Wisbech is but one demesne farm. Focusing on a single locality is often the most fruitful way to illuminate and explore the significance of a particular theme, allowing us to weigh up all the available evidence and, as Stern put it, to ‘probe for fundamental clues’ in a way that would prove difficult to do and even more difficult to follow on a grander scale.1 Even so, it is equally important to place a case study in its broader context; only then, in fact, is it possible to judge the wider significance of those ‘fundamental clues’. The main intention of this final section is therefore to test the Wisbech findings in a bigger laboratory, using similar data from the accounts of a wide range of demesne farms. Widening the evidential base in this way inevitably creates a richer, more complex conclusion, yet at the broadest level it only amplifies the significance of decision-making for our understanding of medieval agriculture. The two themes that have run side by side through the Wisbech case study are now considered separately: this 1

Stern, Hertfordshire Demesne, 7.

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chapter looks at standards of demesne management in England; the next examines the use of yield-raising techniques. The standard of medieval farm management may have been perceived as poor in comparison with later periods, but for the duration of the Middle Ages itself it is invariably viewed as a constant factor: social and economic conditions changed greatly between the thirteenth century and the fifteenth, but the quality of decisionmaking on demesne farms is held to have remained the same. The Wisbech evidence, however, not only indicates that medieval demesne officials were more flexible and proficient than hitherto thought, but also suggests that the quality of management could vary significantly from one individual to the next and from generation to generation. Indeed, by the 1410s and 1420s the sophisticated managerial strategies of the previous century had mostly faded away, the gap between potential and actual financial returns per acre had widened, and the turnover of reeves had become unusually rapid; as with football managers today, results mattered, and poor results could swiftly bring the sack. This chapter develops these themes, and suggests that managerial efficiency more generally was dependent upon person, period, and even place. It looks first at the period before the Black Death, testing the quality of decision-making on other manors, and exploring spatial trends and geographical patterns in managerial standards that the Wisbech evidence on its own could not reveal. The second half of the chapter examines variations in levels of managerial efficiency after the Black Death and weighs up the implications of the evidence for our interpretation of late medieval estate management.

Standards of Demesne Farm Management in England before the Black Death Evidence that Wisbech was by no means alone in being able to secure highly effective farm managers in the decades before the Black Death can be elicited most directly from the cropping strategies employed on market-oriented demesnes. On the estates of Canterbury Cathedral Priory, for instance, more barley and more oats were sown during the famine years of the 1310s at the expense of the usually valuable wheat crop, for the simple reason that they secured better returns per acre: they may have been less valuable

Standards of Demesne Farm Management

191

quarter for quarter, but prices of barley and oats rose almost as much as wheat prices at this time and, more significantly, their yields suffered less.2 Long runs of accounts, such as that for the Bury St Edmunds Abbey demesne of Hinderclay, provide a more sustained view of the commercial responses of farm managers. In the years 1318–38 fluctuations in the price of wheat had a decisive impact upon its sown area at Hinderclay, while the relative acreage under wheat and barley on the demesne was carefully adjusted in line with movements in the relative market price of these two crops. Indeed, over thirteen years in this period, ‘flexible cropping allowed the demesne to achieve a total of almost £27 more than it otherwise would have’.3 The Winchester Pipe Rolls survive in even greater number, and on the bishop of Winchester’s demesne of Hambledon in the second quarter of the fourteenth century, the changing relative price of wheat and barley was similarly influential in determining the balance between these two crops from year to year, as Figure 7.1 shows. In only three years in the period 1327–46—indicated by circles on the acreage line of the graph—did the relative acreage of these crops fall out of line with relative prices.4 In fact, when correlated, these variables produce a Spearman rank coefficient of 0.510, which is statistically significant at a 5 per cent level of probability; in other words, there is less than a 5 per cent chance that the relative prices and acreage of wheat and barley at Hambledon were not linked in this way. Similar indications of the efficiency of demesne management are not hard to find in other areas of a reeve’s responsibility. At Cuxham in Oxfordshire reeves appear to have played the grain market extremely successfully in the years before the Black Death. For example, in the accounting year 1328/9 the reeve waited and sold 80 per cent of the wheat crop in late June and early July when the price stood at 7s. per quarter, rather than the 5s. 4d. per quarter obtainable in the previous November. Had he sold all the grain in November, he would have made over £3 less on wheat sales than he actually did. As at Wisbech, grain prices did not invariably increase during the course of the year, and reeves needed to be watchful. 2

Mate, ‘Estates of Canterbury Cathedral Priory’, 11. Stone, ‘Medieval Farm Management’, 619–23 (quotation at 623). Two of these aberrant years were 1338 and 1339, when market signals must have been disrupted by the financial chaos and sudden dearth of money in the English economy that accompanied the start of the Hundred Years War. 3 4


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Relative values (barley/wheat)

0.9

0.8

0.7

0.6

0.5 Price Acreage 1346

1344

1342

1340

1338

1336

1334

1332

1330

1328

0.4

Fig. 7.1. Sown acreage and sale price of barley relative to wheat at Hambledon, 1327–1346. Circles represent years in which the relative acreage falls out of line with relative prices. Source: HRO, 11M59/B1/80–98.

Indeed, in 1318/19 the Cuxham reeve decided to sell 76 per cent of the wheat crop by the end of April; had he waited on this occasion and sold all of the wheat in early June, barely a month later, he would have made £6 10s. 11d. less than he in fact did because of a subsequent fall in prices. This may not sound much to modern ears, but these theoretical differences should be viewed in the context of average manorial profits for Cuxham of about £40 per year at this time.5 The perspicacious timing of crop sales could certainly boost spending power significantly: in the fourteenth century, £6 10s. 11d. would have been sufficient to pay a carpenter working a fiveday week for the best part of two years and just about enough to fund an undergraduate through three years at university.6 Tracking movements in animal numbers can provide further evidence of the responsiveness of farm management to commercial stimuli. At times of low or falling grain prices, many estates shifted 5 Harvey (ed.), Manorial Records of Cuxham, 334–5, 372; id., Medieval Oxfordshire Village, 94. 6 Farmer, ‘Prices and Wages’, 816–17; Dyer, Standards of Living, 75.


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the balance of their farming towards pastoral husbandry, but the choice of animal often reveals an acute awareness of relative prices and costs. For example, in the late 1330s and 1340s, when prices for dairy products fell less severely than the price of wool, the monks of Canterbury Cathedral Priory wisely chose to invest in cows rather than in sheep.7 Such an estate-wide policy indicates the guiding hand of central administration, but year-to-year changes in livestock numbers at a local level show that manorial officials could be equally shrewd. Pigs were often raised almost exclusively for the market, and numbers of pigs can therefore provide a useful guide to market sensitivity. The number of pigs kept at Hinderclay was certainly highly responsive to prevailing market prices,8 but the degree of responsiveness can be seen even more explicitly at Cuxham. As Figure 7.2 shows, the relationship between national pig prices and numbers of pigs at Cuxham, roughly three-quarters of which were sold, was extremely close and is statistically very significant.9 Nor is this all, for, when compared to this graph, one passing remark in the Cuxham court rolls provides a fascinating snapshot of the decision-making process. Note that there were no pigs at all at Cuxham in 1341, at which point national prices were beginning to recover. This oversight was addressed at the court of 22 May 1341, when it was reported that An inquisition taken by the oath of the whole homage says that six pigs could usefully be kept at a modest cost to the lord in the manor of Cuxham and that now no pig of the lord’s stock is there, but the pigs of Robert the reeve sometimes go into the lord’s manor. Therefore the said Robert is in mercy.10

There are several strands to be unpicked here. While the reeve was plainly being chastised for occasionally taking his own pigs into the lord’s courtyard, it appears that he was also being upbraided for not maintaining the demesne pig herd at an appropriate size; after all, 7 Mate, ‘Estates of Canterbury Cathedral Priory’, 6, 9, 19–20. For a similar example from the 1270s on this estate, see ibid. 4–5 and Farmer, ‘Prices and Wages’, 8 Stone, ‘Medieval Farm Management’, 631. 789–90, 808–9. 9 Harvey, Medieval Oxfordshire Village, 63. For forty-six paired variables in the period 1301–48, the Pearson correlation coefficient is 0.464, which is significant at a 1 per cent level of probability. The fit between prices and numbers of pigs is most exact when prices were falling; when prices rose, the response was sometimes lagged (as, for example, between 1305 and 1310), presumably because of the delay introduced by 10 reproduction. Aston, ‘External Administration and Resources’, 357.


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Sale price per pig (d.) and numbers of pigs

50 45

Prices Pigs

40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 1300 1305 1310 1315 1320 1325 1330 1335 1340 1345 1350

Fig. 7.2. National pig prices and numbers of pigs at Cuxham, 1301–1348. Sources: Farmer, ‘Prices and Wages’, 804–6; Harvey (ed.), Manorial Records of Cuxham, 752–4

no one else was amerced as a result of the inquisition’s findings. But while the reeve evidently made most of the day-to-day decisions about the running of the farm, this episode also reveals the extent to which his fellow villagers—and through them the central administration of the estate—kept a very close eye on him. Perhaps of most interest is the suggested size of the herd. As Figure 7.2 shows, to have kept six pigs on the manor at that time would have brought numbers of pigs even more closely in line with the trend in national prices, which suggests that the members of the inquisition, representing the body of manorial tenants, knew precisely what they were talking about. By extension, since cases concerning the size of the demesne pig herd at Cuxham are rare, we must presume that the reeves were generally deemed to have made good decisions and that it was they who are responsible for the extremely close correlation between pig numbers and prices in Figure 7.2. Medieval reeves were clearly capable of extremely businesslike behaviour and could be highly responsive to changing market conditions. In fact, some aspects of medieval farm management were virtually the same as they were to be nearly six centuries later.


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Research by Hunt and Pam has revealed that in late nineteenthcentury Essex the acreage under wheat was determined in the same way as it had been at Wisbech and Hinderclay in the early fourteenthcentury, by the price of that crop. Furthermore, the acreage of barley relative to wheat in late Victorian Essex was influenced chiefly by the relative price of these crops, as was the case in early fourteenth century Hinderclay and Hambledon.11 The intervening centuries certainly saw a vast amount of economic and social change; indeed, many countrymen from the turn of the fourteenth century would have been hard-pressed to recognize their local area after these six centuries of change. But this does not mean that they were less aware of or less responsive to their economic environment than their later counterparts. In fact, there seems to have been a remarkable degree of continuity in economic outlook over this period of enormous structural change: commercial farmers in the late nineteenth century took very close note of market signals and altered the running of their farms accordingly, in much the same way as their medieval forebears had. The behaviour of medieval farm managers by this reckoning could be sophisticated, rational, and much more ‘modern’ than historians have previously given them credit for. Having said that, the correlation between crop prices and acreage in the Middle Ages was perhaps not quite as strong as it was later to be. Yet nineteenth-century farmers had access to published prices, which were regularly updated, and vast amounts of other information from newspapers and journals.12 Nor should the cultural context of medieval farm management be overlooked in making such comparisons, for there were many significant constraints to any decisions made in the Middle Ages. Predicting movements in market prices is difficult at the best of times, but medieval reeves— unlike nineteenth-century farmers—were not making decisions about land that they owned, and would doubtless have been deterred from making sweeping changes each year by the knowledge that they were putting their job on the line. Nor was the market the only factor that reeves had to take into account: the consumption needs of the lord’s household were sometimes paramount, and even when they were not, labourers and livestock on the 11 12

Hunt and Pam, ‘Managerial Failure?’, 262–3. Goddard, ‘Agricultural Institutions’.

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demesne still needed to be fed, chiefly from the stock of manorial produce. Neither could medieval fields sustainably support grain crops year after year and so fallow years or leguminous breaks needed to be incorporated in any cropping schedule. Indeed, in some regions, the regular nature of field systems would have added a further restraint to cropping decisions. Field systems on the Wisbech demesne were extremely flexible and allowed reeves a certain amount of freedom to implement their cropping strategies, but this was not the case on many midland manors. At Cuxham, for instance, wheat was the only winter-sown crop in a strict threecourse rotation and so the acreage under wheat simply varied according to the size of the three fields.13 Strict rotations were by no means completely suffocating—where two or more crops were sown in any one season the balance between them could be changed from year to year, and occasionally cultivated outfields provided a further degree of latitude—but they would nevertheless have imposed significant restrictions. Before the advent of modern agricultural technology, the problems posed by environmental conditions presumably loomed larger as well. Some soils are naturally much better for producing certain crops, while the weather could of course wreck even the best-laid plans. Medieval flocks and herds were frequently and often severely depleted by livestock murrain as well: in fact at Hinderclay mortality levels among sheep rose above 20 per cent in roughly one year in four.14 Taking these various constraints into account, we should perhaps think of the behaviour of medieval reeves as being appropriately rational: while they were manifestly thinking and acting in rational ways, the scope of their decision-making was subject to significant restraints. By the same token, of course, the degree of market responsiveness found at Wisbech, Hinderclay, Hambledon, and Cuxham is nothing short of remarkable. This discussion has thus far been framed in terms of responding to market forces, but medieval reeves could be equally responsive to the consumption requirements of manor and estate. The influence of the market was naturally less prominent when the primary intention was to supply the lord’s household, yet decisions still needed to be made, not least concerning the cost of producing rather 13

Harvey, Medieval Oxfordshire Village, 164–5; id. (ed.), Manorial Records of 14 Chicago UL, Bacon 438–510. Cuxham, 733–6.

Standards of Demesne Farm Management 1306–7 Total: 45.6 quarters 4% 0% 4%

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1307–8 Total: 56.1 quarters 4% 8%

0%

35% 20%

30%

57% 4% 4%

15%

8% Bolton Halton

Angrum Ingthorpe

1308–9 Total: 44.6 quarters

7% 0% Riddings Malham

How Ryther

1309–10 Total: 67.4 quarters

7% 0% 4% 6%

12% 0% 4% 8% 0%

9%

20%

18% 69%

5%

32% 6%

Fig. 7.3. Location of wheat sowing on the estates of Bolton Priory, 1306–1310. Source: Kershaw and Smith (eds.), Bolton Priory Compotus, 222, 240, 260, 280.

than buying and transporting produce, the quantity of each product to produce, and the most suitable location for growing different crops or raising different types of livestock. The Hinderclay accounts reveal, for example, that the area under oats—which were chiefly used to provide livestock fodder and pottage for the famuli— was determined by estimated consumption needs from year to year.15 Likewise, the late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century compotus of Bolton Priory suggests that sedentary landlords who consumed much of their own produce did not relentlessly pursue an unchanging style of production on their home farms. As Figure 7.3 shows, the proportion of wheat sown on the different demesnes of 15

Stone, ‘Medieval Farm Management’, 622.

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Bolton Priory could vary considerably from year to year. In fact, roughly the same amount of wheat was planted in 1306–7 and 1308–9, but plainly in very different places. The precise explanation for these changes is difficult to gauge at this remove, but that does not mean we should assume there was no rhyme or reason behind them. Indeed, concern with maintaining the quality of reeves’ decisions seems to have been universal in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Glimpses of this can be found in manorial court rolls as well as accounts. For instance, at the Surrey manor of Thorncroft an inquisition was held in 1289 ‘as to whether Simon the reeve conducted himself well or not’. The members of the inquisition, which amounted to the whole court, reported that ‘the said reeve is good and faithful in his office in all things; and all of them offer to prove [this]’.16 It is worth noting that ‘good’ comes before ‘faithful’. Reeves were certainly expected to be loyal, and one of the motivations behind the keeping of detailed accounts was of course to minimize the possibility of fraudulent behaviour. Yet routine enquiries into the conduct of the reeve and the quality of their decision-making appear to have been at least as important. Thomas, the reeve of Bishopstone in Wiltshire, was fined 2s. in 1301/2 because ‘he sowed the lord’s land with bad seed’, while in the same year Roger Uppehull, reeve of Kingston St Mary in Somerset, was fined 1s. because ‘he neglected to perform his office’.17 Indeed, on the prior of Ely’s manor of Sutton the whole village was fined in 1313 for electing a reeve laconically described as ‘insufficient’.18 While it might be tempting to interpret these references as an indication of the poor quality of medieval reeves, it instead seems to speak volumes both for the importance of local decision-making and for the generally high standard of management that must have prevailed at that time. The Tightening of Managerial Efficiency at the Turn of the Fourteenth Century Close analysis of manorial records, then, suggests that medieval farm managers, many of whom were unfree peasants, generally 16

Aston, ‘External Administration and Resources’, 358. Page, Pipe Roll, 1301–2, 17, 73. Miller, Abbey and Bishopric, 270. I am grateful to Erin McGibbon for pointing this out to me. 17 18


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behaved in a more rational way than has previously been thought. Indeed, some were employing essentially the same managerial strategies that were being used to great effect nearly six centuries later. But while the sophisticated responses of demesne officials to market forces have been reconstructed in detail for Wisbech and briefly sketched elsewhere, the extent to which these strategies were consistently employed on commercial demesne farms in the period before the Black Death is yet to be established. Of course, at any given moment the abilities of different reeves would have varied from one to the next, much as the qualities of business managers and company directors in the modern world is far from consistent. Yet a preliminary survey of the accounts for various demesne farms suggests that distinct and intriguing patterns in the level of managerial efficiency can in fact be traced in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. This is not to say that some demesne managers were highly efficient and others completely ineffective, but rather that some may have been significantly more efficient than others at certain times and in certain places. The Wisbech accounts do not enable us to reconstruct farm management before 1313, when the series of accounts begins. However, manorial accounts from other manors and estates suggest that demesne management—while already fairly effective—was becoming increasingly efficient during the last years of the thirteenth century. The evidence for this takes various forms. First, calculations of profit became increasingly common at that time. For example, an extent of c.1290 for the estates of the bishopric of Worcester sought to assess the ‘profit of wainage and stock’, seemingly for the first time. Profits also began to be calculated on the estate of God’s House, Southampton, from 1294 onwards, and at Bolton Priory from 1296. On the Westminster Abbey manor of Kinsbourne and on the Bury St Edmunds Abbey demesne of Hinderclay, profit calculations were first made in 1296 as well, while on the estates of Merton College, Oxford, such calculations were most common between 1295 and 1305. On the bishop of Lichfield’s estate, similar calculations began to be made from 1304–5.19 It should be stressed that this clustering of profit calculations does not reflect a sudden 19 Dyer, Lords and Peasants, 54; Postles, ‘Perception of Profit’, 20, 22; Kershaw and Smith (eds.), Bolton Priory Compotus, 13; Stern, Hertfordshire Demesne, 154; Chicago UL, Bacon 429.

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breakthrough in accounting techniques or knowledge; after all, such calculations were first recorded on the estates of Canterbury Cathedral Priory and on those of St Mary’s Abbey, Winchester, in the 1220s and 1230s.20 Rather, it appears to reflect a growing concern in the years 1290–1305 with the profitability and, by implication, the efficiency of demesne management. Indeed, there seems to have been a distinct tightening in the administration of many estates at about the same time. Between 1288 and 1292 the financial administration of the manors of Canterbury Cathedral Priory was taken out of the hands of lay serjeants and instead entrusted to four monk–wardens, a development which appears to have brought enhanced revenues.21 At Bolton Priory granary sections were first introduced into the accounts in 1296, and developed into their full form over the next six years.22 On the estates of the bishop of Winchester, auditors in the late 1290s started to examine the reeves’ accounts in an increasingly fastidious way: super compotum sales were regularly noted for the first time; yields began to be calculated in the margins of the pipe rolls; the auditors began to annotate the rolls with instructions to reeves; and grain allowances for manorial officials were cut. Notably, too, the early fourteenth-century pipe rolls increasingly contain phrases such as ‘if it is seen that a profit can be made’.23 A similar tightening of management is apparent on the estates of Merton College at this time. Most notably, the number of estate stewards employed to oversee its southern manors increased from one to five in 1297, and the audit—which had previously been held at different manors from year to year—was from 1300 always held at Oxford, a development which Aston felt must have resulted in greater efficiency.24 This growing concern with profitability and demesne management may well have prompted broad changes in estate policy, for a number of larger landlords began to reconsider the option of leasing out some of their demesne resources at this time. Some simply put an end to direct cheese production in favour of leasing their dairy 20

Postles, ‘Perception of Profit’, 22. Mate, ‘Farming out of Manors’, 336–7. Conversely, Ely Cathedral Priory hired a professional, lay supervisor in 1304 to oversee their estates: Evans, ‘Medieval 22 Kershaw, Bolton Priory, 36, 38. Estate’, 9. 23 Page, ‘Medieval Bishops of Winchester’, 9–10. 24 Aston, ‘External Administration and Resources’, 327, 343–4. 21


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herds,25 but others put whole manors out to farm. For example, the Merton College demesnes of Thorncroft and Gamlingay were leased between 1292–1302 and 1302–14 respectively.26 Bolton Priory, too, leased its demesnes at Cononley and Kildewick between 1300–14 and 1304–10, while at about the same time the abbey of Westminster decided to farm out its demesnes of Pinvin and Staines, albeit temporarily.27 Meanwhile, in 1306 the bishop of Worcester himself suggested to his steward that it no longer seemed useful to cultivate the demesne manors of Alvechurch, Hanbury, Kempsey, and Wick, and a few years later ordered the long-suffering steward to lease out demesnes that were barren or poorly situated.28 But this concern with profitability also expressed itself at a local level and it is here that a sense of increased efficiency is most evident. Local changes in farm management during the 1290s can be particularly well illustrated at Hinderclay, for which thirty-six yearly accounts survive for the period 1268–1314.29 In terms of accounting practice, the acreage sown with different crops was regularly recorded from 1293 onwards; manorial profits, as we have seen, were calculated in every year from 1296; in that year the accounts were also compiled at Michaelmas (29 September) for the first time, as became the standard practice elsewhere, rather than at St Margaret’s (20 July); and a labour services account was regularly appended to the rolls from 1298. Changes are also apparent in terms of managerial personnel: a paid serjeant (or bailiff ) was first employed in 1295; while from 1296 onwards the manor also paid an annual sum of 20s. as a contribution towards the cost of an estate steward. Significant changes were also made in terms of the disposal of produce, providing a clear indication that the function of the demesne was being reassessed at this time. For example, a much higher proportion of wheat was sold rather than being consumed on manor or estate from 1295, so that where 39 per cent of wheat had been consumed and 40 per cent sold between 1283 and 1292, only 15 per cent of wheat was consumed by the first decade of the fourteenth century and 61 per cent sold. The same development can be seen in the disposal of pigs, with a very sharp break in 1295: in the years 1283–92, 75 per cent of pigs were consumed and 25 26 27 28

See e.g. Mate, ‘Estates of Canterbury Cathedral Priory’, 5. Aston, ‘External Administration and Resources’, 322; MCR 5363–70. Kershaw, Bolton Priory, 36–7; Harvey, Westminster Abbey, 149. 29 Dyer, Lords and Peasants, 79, 82. Chicago UL, Bacon 410–45.

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14 per cent sold, but this had changed by 1300–9 to 31 per cent consumed and 59 per cent sold. Changes were also made to the management of crops and livestock: the percentage of winter-sown crops increased; the dairy herd was leased in 1297; the number of geese on the demesne at Michaelmas each year dropped sharply from an average of seventy-one in the years 1278–96 to sixteen in the period 1297–1314; and sheep-farming was only taken up seriously in 1304. The 1290s also saw the end of a fascinating experiment in the use of yield-raising techniques: between 1268 and 1292 the spreading of marl and the sowing of vetch had been employed in alternate bursts—marl between 1268 and 1272, vetch in the years 1273–4, marl again from 1277 to 1282, and vetch between 1285 and 1292—but thereafter marl was never again deemed worth applying to the demesne lands and vetch was only sown once more after a rise in grain prices in 1306. So within a decade or so the management of the demesne of Hinderclay had been completely transformed. Of course, such changes are easier to document than shifts in the economic mentality of farm officials, but nevertheless these changes do seem to have been accompanied by an increased responsiveness to market prices. As we shall see in the next section (Figure 7.6), the relative acreage under wheat and barley at Hinderclay appears to have become considerably more responsive to fluctuations in the relative price of these crops from 1296 onwards.30 Moreover, it is striking that the close relationship between prices and numbers of pigs on the manor of Cuxham, which was so clearly apparent from 1301 to 1347, was not evident at all between 1289 and 1300.31 In sum, demesne and estate management appears to have become increasingly profit-conscious and, as a result, more efficient and responsive at the turn of the fourteenth century. But what was driving this development? The most plausible answer seems to be that economic conditions for large-scale producers deteriorated significantly during the last quarter of the thirteenth century and the need to husband resources more effectively was consequently 30

Although sown acreage was only recorded in the Hinderclay accounts from 1293, the area under wheat and barley before then can be estimated by dividing the amount of seed sown each year by the mean seeding rates for these crops from 1293 onwards. 31 Harvey (ed.), Manorial Records of Cuxham, 751–2; Farmer, ‘Prices and Wages’, 804.

Index (100 = mean price/wage 1330/1–1346/7)


203

(Wheat 1296: 181)

165 150 135 120 105 90 75

Wheat Barley

60 45 1270

1275

1280

1285

1290

1295

Reaping Threshing 1300

1305

Fig. 7.4. Indices of national grain prices and agricultural wages, 1271–1304. Source: Farmer, ‘Prices and Wages’, 789–90, 813–15.

increased. The period between the start of direct demesne cultivation at the turn of the thirteenth century and the agrarian crisis of 1315–22 is generally viewed as an era of ‘high farming’ for landlords, in which prices were high and rising and wages remained low. This is essentially correct. However, as Figure 7.4 shows, the economic outlook was not invariably sunny for large-scale producers during this period. Wages, though generally low, gradually increased during the course of the thirteenth century, and this trend became more marked from the late 1270s onwards. Perhaps more significantly, prices—especially grain prices—dropped uniformly between the late 1270s and 1305 (with the exception of the famine years in the mid-1290s). Indeed, between 1271–5 and 1301–5 the prices of wheat and barley fell by 32 per cent and 30 per cent respectively. Meanwhile, the cost of reaping and binding corn rose by 21 per cent and of threshing and winnowing it by 33 per cent. The margin between product prices and labour costs, which had been increasing for much of the thirteenth century, had suddenly become much narrower. To make matters worse, levels of taxation rose massively at about the same time. Indeed, the reign of Edward I was a turning point in

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the history of taxation. Until then, levels of taxation had been comparatively low, but a new fiscal system was introduced by Edward I and during the mid-1290s in particular levels of taxation soared as the king sought money to finance his wars with Wales, France, and Scotland. Prestwich has estimated that over the course of his reign Edward received a total of £800,000 from direct lay taxes and the clergy; approximately one-third of this was levied in the years 1294–7.32 The impact on all levels of English society—not least, of course, on the English peasantry—must have been immense. Even within the seigneurial sector, Mate has calculated that Canterbury Cathedral Priory paid out nearly 16 per cent of their revenue in taxes between 1295 and 1297, while Kershaw has estimated that ‘the Half of 1294 cost [Bolton Priory] . . . some 22 per cent of its cash expenditure during the accounting year 1294/5’.33 It is perhaps no wonder that the chronicler of Dunstable Priory greeted the death of the man who had negotiated the grant of the infamous maltolt in the mid-1290s with barely concealed relish.34 The more straitened circumstances that landlords suddenly found themselves in at the turn of the fourteenth century may well have provided the impetus for the evident tightening of managerial practice, much as deteriorating economic conditions did at Wisbech in the late fourteenth century.35 But if this was the case, then lurking behind it is an important general point, for—in contrast to the pattern described here—many historians associate more efficient and effective responses to market forces with periods of rising prices. Campbell interprets the thirteenth century as a time of von Thunenesque discovery, Wrightson depicts the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as a era of maturing economic awareness, and Overton concludes that it was only in the late eighteenth century that economic rationality blossomed into a recognizably modern form: all of these periods are conspicuously ones of growing population and rising prices.36 On the one hand, rising demand undoubtedly did stimulate economic growth in terms of the expansion of towns and 32

Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance, 191. Mate, ‘Impact of War’, 778; Kershaw, Bolton Priory, 167. Power, Wool Trade, 79. 35 Significantly, the number of major building projects on cathedrals and abbeys in England also started to decrease rapidly at the end of the 13th century, suggesting that landlords tightened their expenditure as well: Morris, Cathedrals and Abbeys, 180. 36 Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 424–30; Wrightson, Earthly Necessities, 203; Overton, Agricultural Revolution, 202. 33 34


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trade, improved access to markets, greater incentive to produce for the market, higher levels of output, and a notable degree of specialization, in the way that Adam Smith and later historians have portrayed.37 But, as Pollard pointed out, careful management and accurate accounting was actually less essential at times when sale prices were greatly in excess of costs, since almost any large producer was capable of making a reasonable profit.38 To put it another way, the margin for error was comparatively large at such times, and while producers in this situation should not necessarily be castigated as hopelessly inefficient, it seems equally likely that they were not forced into operating at a higher level of efficiency. It was only when the margin for error narrowed, as it did in the late thirteenth century, that the competitive edge of highly efficient production became a major determinant of economic success. At this point decisionmaking had—by dint of necessity—to be extremely good, or profits were likely to be massively reduced or even non-existent. Exploring Geographical Variations in Managerial Efficiency The concept that the level of managerial efficiency in demesne agriculture before the Black Death may be broadly related to the tightness with which landlords’ purse strings were pulled is worth exploring in a geographical as well as a chronological sense. It has been recognized for some time that demesnes close to large towns, particularly in areas where the soil was fertile and easily worked and transport for bulky produce was cheap, often intensified their use of yield-raising techniques in response to market demand; conversely, in more remote areas, especially where soils were heavy, demesnes were much more likely to adopt these techniques with discretion.39 But the relationship between intensification and the efficiency of production is much less clearly articulated. In theory, Campbell’s model suggests that it was equally efficient for commercial farmers to adopt more intensive techniques where demand was high and for their counterparts elsewhere to adopt them to a lesser extent. Yet such notions of equality in terms of economic efficiency appear to run counter to the instinct of many medieval historians. Mate, for example, refers to ‘techniques that could make 37 For a summary and critique of the theory of commercialization and its application to the medieval English economy, see Hatcher and Bailey, Modelling the Middle 38 Pollard, Genesis of Modern Management, 245–6. Ages, 121–73. 39 See e.g. Campbell, ‘Economic Rent’; Stone, ‘Medieval Farm Management’.

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farming more efficient and more productive’, suggesting that the two inherently go hand in hand.40 Astill and Grant implied much the same thing when they confessed to a feeling of depression knowing that techniques for raising yields in medieval England were not more widely adopted.41 Even Campbell at times contradicts the implications of his own model by contrasting the ‘few favoured localities’, on the one hand, with regions, on the other, where incentives to ‘make the best of available opportunities were weakest’, where ‘economic development was particularly deterred’, and where yields were ‘unimpressive and, sometimes, dismal’. More explicitly still, he has indicated that proficiency and productivity in agriculture were inextricably intertwined, for it was only on ‘the better managed farms’ in Norfolk that more intensive techniques were adopted and crop yields raised.42 In fact, economically remote demesnes such as Hinderclay could be highly efficient in their management of resources, as we have seen. But this still reveals little about the relative efficiency of farms in different areas: was a demesne such as Hinderclay less efficient, as efficient, or more efficient than demesnes in prime locations such as eastern Norfolk? There are various ways in which an answer to this question could be sought. For example, the profitability of farms with similar resources could be compared, or—in terms of the adoption of techniques—it may prove fruitful to explore the relative productivity of labour. But such comparisons are fraught with problems. In the context of the themes addressed in this chapter, one potentially revealing and significantly less problematic measure of comparative efficiency is the degree to which officials on different farms responded to market signals in the formulation of their cropping strategies. Of course there are difficulties here too—not least that different landlords had different objectives and that the constraints faced by reeves varied from manor to manor and from one estate to the next—but these can be controlled to some extent. The most controlled comparisons can probably be made for the sowing of wheat and barley on the estates of the bishopric of Winchester. Here, at least, we have the same landlord, a similar 40

Mate, ‘Agricultural Technology’, 251. Astill and Grant, ‘Medieval Countryside’, 216. Campbell, ‘Economic Rent’, 233, 240, 243; id., ‘Progressiveness and Backwardness’, 544, 552; id., ‘Ecology versus Economics’, 93; id., ‘People and Land’, 96, 98; id., ‘Medieval Arable and Pastoral Husbandry’, 50. 41 42


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environment, and a sufficiently long and complete series of account rolls for a sustained analysis to be carried out. There are potential difficulties, particularly the customary acres used on some manors and the fact that few demesnes grew marketable amounts of both crops. But where standard acres were employed and where demesnes planted both barley and wheat in some quantity, the results are extremely interesting. We have already seen on the demesne of Hambledon that the relative price of barley and wheat appears to have been the main determinant of the relative acreage under the two crops between 1327 and 1346. Hambledon was a highly commercialized demesne and sold a large proportion of the wheat and barley that it produced at this time.43 Unfortunately, as with most accounts, the actual location of the market is seldom specified, yet we know that a weekly market at Hambledon had been granted in 1256 (and was in use in 1301–2), that by the late fourteenth century the manor often sold grain to local villagers, and that the nearest large towns—Winchester and Southampton—were both roughly 20 miles distant.44 As Farmer has demonstrated, farm managers usually opted to use markets that were within a radius of about 10 miles of their demesne, a day’s journey there and back, and only carried corn further afield in extreme circumstances.45 On this evidence, it seems reasonable to suggest that Hambledon, with its commercial outlook and closely monitored cropping strategies, falls into the category of a comparatively remote manor. This can be compared directly with the pattern of cropping on the bishop of Winchester’s manor of Crawley, also in Hampshire. Like Hambledon, Crawley grew both wheat and barley, and sold most of these crops at market. Indeed, between 1327 and 1346, after deducting seedcorn, all the wheat and 48 per cent of the barley that remained was sold.46 But unlike Hambledon, Crawley was situated 43 In 1301–2, after deducting seedcorn, 93 per cent of the wheat and 43 per cent of the barley that remained at Hambledon was sold: Page (ed.), Pipe Roll, 1301–2, 300–1. In three years in the period 1327–46, some of the corn designated as ‘sold’ was in fact sent to Winchester for the use of the lord’s household, but the bulk of sales appear to have been genuine. 44 Calendar of Charter Rolls, i. 455; Page (ed.), Pipe Roll, 1301–2, 298; Farmer, ‘Marketing the Produce’, 361. 45 Farmer, ‘Two Wiltshire Manors’. Indeed, in 1349—extreme circumstances indeed—60 per cent of the Hambledon wheat sales were made at ‘Suthi’, presumably Southampton; the sheer fact that the location was stated on this one occasion would suggest that this was the exception rather than the rule. 46 Gras and Gras, Economic and Social History, 340–1, 349–50.

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much closer to Winchester, lying only 5 miles or so outside the town. At this time, Winchester probably had a population of 10,000–12,000, making it one of the four or five largest towns in medieval England.47 Crawley certainly lay within the normal extent of Winchester’s hinterland, and Gras and Gras were convinced that the Crawley reeves did indeed sell the bulk of their corn in this urban market.48 And yet, in the shadow of what was by medieval standards a large town, the Crawley accounts provide much less evidence of sophisticated and rational responses to prices. Although the trend in relative sown acreage of wheat and barley at Crawley did move broadly in line with medium-term movements in the relative prices of the two crops, there was barely any relationship at all between these variables on a year-to-year basis, a finding which is confirmed by statistical analysis.49 It would seem that reeves at Crawley were considerably less responsive to changing prices than their counterparts on the more remote manor of Hambledon. The extent of the difference is illustrated in Figure 7.5, which measures the gap from year to year between the relative price and the relative acreage of barley and wheat on each of the demesnes. In comparing the degree of responsiveness, the most significant point to notice is the extent to which this gap varied over time: essentially, the closer the response to changing prices, the more stable the gap remains. At Hambledon, the gap between relative prices and relative acreage stayed remarkably stable, hovering between 0.01 and 0.15 in sixteen out of nineteen years, and only growing to 0.20–0.22 in the other three years. By contrast, the gap between these variables at Crawley varied to a much greater extent, being in the range 0.01–0.15 in six years, 0.16–0.30 in seven years, and greater than 0.30 in the remaining five years, peaking at 0.67 in 1344. This evidence suggests that proximity to a large market may have encouraged farm officials to adopt a more relaxed and less efficient style of management. A similar, if less controlled, comparison can be made for the sowing of wheat and barley on the demesnes of Hanworth and Hinderclay. Hanworth, in the north-eastern corner of Norfolk, was approximately 15 miles from Norwich. Although this was 47

Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England: Towns, 263, 274. Gras and Gras, Economic and Social History, 18. The Spearman rank correlation coefficient for these two variables at 0.152 is statistically insignificant; as reported above, the result for Hambledon was 0.510. 48 49


209

1327 1346

0.69

1328

1345

1329 0.46

1344

1330

0.23

1343

1342

1331

1332

0.00

1341

Crawley Hambledon

1333

1340

1334 1339

1335 1338

1336 1337

Fig. 7.5. Difference between the relative price and relative acreage of barley and wheat at Crawley and Hambledon, 1327–1346. Source: HRO, 11M59/B1/80–98.

a considerable distance in terms of marketing grain, the fertile soils and extremely dense population of Norwich and the surrounding countryside nevertheless encouraged farm officials at Hanworth to aim for high yields by the intensive use of yield-raising techniques.50 By contrast, Hinderclay was located in the most economically remote region of East Anglia; as a mid-twentieth-century survey of this area observed, ‘Hinderclay is not a bad description . . . at the back of beyond and stuck in the clay.’ As a result, the demesne here was cultivated much less intensively than Hanworth, yields were correspondingly low, and—while highly commercialized—farm managers probably sold most of their grain at a local village market.51 But, in terms of responding to grain prices, farm officials at Hinderclay appear to have been considerably more efficient in the decade after 1295 than those at Hanworth. Figure 7.6 shows the relative sown 50 Rutledge, ‘Immigration and Population Growth’; Campbell, ‘Agricultural Progress’, 33–4, 38; id., English Seigniorial Agriculture, 337–8. 51 Wallace, East Anglia, 49; Stone, ‘Medieval Farm Management’.


210 1.50

Relative values

1.25 Prices Hinderclay Hanworth

1.00 0.75 0.50 0.25

1306

1304

1302

1300

1298

1296

1294

1292

1290

0.00

Fig. 7.6. Wheat and barley: relative national prices and relative sown acreage at Hinderclay and Hanworth, 1290–1306. Circles indicate years in which cropping decisions appear ill-judged. Sources: Farmer, ‘Prices and Wages’, 790; Chicago UL, Bacon 424–39; Campbell, ‘Field Systems’, 341.

acreages of wheat and barley on the two demesnes between 1290 and 1306, and compares them to relative national grain prices; the circles on the acreage lines of the graph indicate years in which cropping decisions appear ill-judged. The first point to note is the chronology of the Hinderclay trend. Until 1295 several decisions were less than efficient on this reckoning, but in the ten observed years thereafter— following the managerial tightening described above—the correlation between relative prices and relative acreage was extremely good. Fewer accounts survive for Hanworth and the soil here was better suited to barley than wheat,52 but the series nevertheless suggests that demesne management on this intensively cultivated demesne was less responsive to the market than was the case at remote Hinderclay. On the basis of these comparisons, it would seem that there may be grounds for arguing that demesnes in more remote locations were somewhat more efficient than those close to large urban markets. Of course, this is based on just a handful of manors, but nonetheless the results are highly suggestive. Part of the explanation for this apparent discrepancy may be that market signals radiating 52

However, sufficient wheat was grown at Hanworth that it must have been deemed a worthwhile enterprise.


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from large towns that traded at a regional, national, and sometimes international level were harder to read and predict than those emanating from smaller village markets whose trade was predominantly local, less diverse, and more familiar. Yet the analysis is also consistent with the discussion of changes in farm management at the end of the thirteenth century. When the margin for error was narrow—in this case, supplying a local market—reeves had to be much more careful to get their decisions right. A wrong decision might result in flooding the market to the detriment of prices or being left with unsold grain, which would have forced reeves to make expensive cart trips to try their luck at more distant markets. By contrast, on the doorstep of a large urban market, growing too much of any one crop would not have mattered to the same extent, for the pool of potential purchasers was comparatively large and there was much less chance of affecting prices. This is not to say that demesnes close to large markets were economically or managerially naive; there was just more economic leeway for reeves on these demesnes and the need to manage their crop choices as effectively as possible on a year-to-year basis was consequently not so pressing. Nor are indications of geographical variations in managerial efficiency confined to crop choice. Norwich Cathedral Priory is renowned not only for the agricultural progressiveness of many of its Norfolk demesnes, but also for being one of the first estates to engage with the complexities of calculating the profits of cultivation.53 But, as Kershaw noted, it is revealing to compare the nature of these calculations with those made at Bolton Priory, much further from the commercial heart of the country. Most notably, the cash values used to calculate profit at Bolton varied seasonally, much as grain prices did, and Kershaw suggests that these values ‘compare quite closely with the current price of corn’. By contrast, the prices chosen by the monks of Norwich Cathedral Priory at this time appear to have been comparatively arbitrary, bearing little relation to market values.54 It again appears that as distance from the market increased, the necessity to manage lands as efficiently and effectively as possible became greater rather than less. Demesnes existed in diverse and changing social and economic conditions, and the efficiency with which they were run probably varied over time and from manor to manor and region to region. 53

Stone, ‘Profit and Loss Accountancy’.

54

Kershaw, Bolton Priory, 43.

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Yet, contrary to common assumptions, the management of resources may well have been most efficient when and where economic conditions were comparatively unfavourable. Farm management before the 1290s or on demesnes close to large markets was far from inept, but it appears that many demesnes operated at a higher level of efficiency when the economic situation tightened at the turn of the fourteenth century, and that remote demesnes were, by necessity, the most efficient of all. Indeed, despite a favourable location, reeves at Wisbech were in some respects less subtle in their responses to the market than those at remote Hinderclay. Wisbech was well placed to exploit the sea trade around Lynn and the Wash, yet fluctuations in international trade cannot have been easy to predict and, while demesne resources here were clearly managed very well, there was plainly more latitude in this market than was the case in the depths of the Suffolk countryside. At Hinderclay such was the efficiency with which the demesne was run that when prices of agricultural products generally plummeted in the 1330s and 1340s, recorded profits for this manor remained remarkably stable.55 There are doubtless exceptions to this broad diagnosis of standards of demesne management before the Black Death, yet the principles underlying it are less radical than might at first appear, as the efficiency drives implemented by modern businesses and institutions at times of comparative hardship suggest. For medieval farm managers, choosing the right combination of crops and livestock was an essential part of their job, and when economic conditions worsened or their market was restricted, the need to get these decisions right was greatly magnified.

Standards of Demesne Farm Management after the Black Death Standards of demesne farm management at Wisbech remained high for half a century or so after the Black Death. In fact, the role of decision-making in determining the success of demesne farms during the third quarter of the fourteenth century—the so-called ‘Indian summer’ for direct cultivation—may well have been underestimated. Judging by this example, the Indian summer was not simply 55

Stone, ‘Medieval Farm Management’, 632–3.


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an exogenous phenomenon, but was instead engineered in part by the ability of reeves to respond flexibly and skilfully to changing economic conditions. Prices may have been unexpectedly buoyant at this time and monetary wages were doubtless constrained by the Ordinance and Statute of Labourers, but the relative value of different crops and livestock was constantly fluctuating, the price of goods continued to vary seasonally, and wages did creep up. Ensuring a profitable return in these circumstances required careful management, not least with regard to crop choice, the timing of market sales, and levels of inputs. Similarly, in the late fourteenth century, by which time the price of most products had turned decisively downwards and wages had risen further, poor decision-making would have brought many landlords to their economic knees; yet at Wisbech the farm continued to be cultivated with reasonable success for several decades after prices and wages had parted company. Wisbech was certainly not alone in this respect. As before the Black Death, tangible examples of responsive and businesslike behaviour can be found in many areas of a reeve’s responsibility, not least the disposal of produce. On the estates of Canterbury Cathedral Priory, for example, newborn lambs were increasingly sold in the late 1360s and 1370s in response to a doubling in the price of lambs since the 1340s.56 Meanwhile, officials at Hinderclay were extremely adept at timing grain sales during the course of the agricultural year. Their success in this aspect of management can be gauged by comparing the extent (in terms of percentage) to which the total value of actual sales of a crop had gone from the lowest potential value towards their highest potential value given seasonal changes in recorded sale prices. In effect, a result close to 0 per cent would indicate that the reeve had sold the majority of a crop at the lowest value for the year, while a result approaching 100 per cent would show that he had sold most of it at the highest price. In ten years out of fourteen for which accounts survive during the periods 1349–54 and 1361–74, officials at Hinderclay timed the marketing of wheat in such a way that they pushed the total value of these sales to between 51 and 90 per cent of its potential total, a remarkably good return. Not all reeves were equally shrewd, but in only two years did the return drop below 40 per cent.57 Nor are the 56 57

Mate, ‘Agrarian Economy after the Black Death’, 345. Chicago UL, Bacon 468–73, 479–86.

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implications of these figures confined to assessing the effectiveness of marketing corn, for hidden behind the grain prices that account rolls record—and that medieval economic historians rely on—were the people that determined the timing of sales during the course of the year. Had demesne officials not been so skilled at reading the market, recorded prices would have been significantly lower and the Indian summer decidedly cooler. The responsiveness with which reeves adjusted crop acreages and livestock numbers as economic conditions changed also helped to determine the profitability of their demesne farms during the second half of the fourteenth century. As has long been recognized, comparatively high wool prices and the lower labour costs of sheepfarming prompted many landlords to increase the size of their flocks at this time.58 What is not appreciated, however, is the sensitivity with which some landlords responded to changing wool prices. The price of wool did not simply rise, but in fact fell by steps from the mid-1370s onwards and, as Figure 7.7 shows, such fluctuations were closely tracked on the Westminster Abbey demesne of Kinsbourne: as prices rose after the Black Death, so too did total sheep numbers (excluding newborn lambs); and when prices fell in the mid-1370s, before recovering slightly in the mid-1380s and then falling again, the number of sheep at Kinsbourne more or less followed this pattern. This was no simple task, for medieval sheep flocks were regularly depleted by murrain: in eight years mortality rates at Kinsbourne rose above 20 per cent of the flock; indeed, in 1368 and 1377, 49 per cent and 68 per cent of the flock died.59 Yet officials at Kinsbourne attempted to get livestock numbers quickly back in line with prices after such outbreaks: though sheep numbers plummeted after the disastrous murrain of 1377, for example, the flock size was brought up to a level consonant with the trend in prices within just two years.60 The flexibility of landlords at this time can be seen in the development of more localized pastoral enterprises as well. Labour inputs in rabbit-farming were comparatively low and cullings could be increased sharply without a concomitant rise in costs, so that when grain prices fell in the 1370s 58

Stone, ‘Productivity and Management’, 1–2. Stern, Hertfordshire Demesne, 217–22. Given such problems with disease, it is remarkable that correlating national wool prices and total sheep numbers at Kinsbourne produces a coefficient of 0.310, which is significant at a 10 per cent level of probability. 59 60

Standards of Demesne Farm Management 300

215 7

Sheep (other than newborn lambs) National wool prices

4 150 3 100

2

1395

1390

1385

1380

1375

1370

0 1365

0 1360

1

1355

50

1350

Number of sheep

5 200

Price of wool (s./stone)

6

250

Fig. 7.7. Number of sheep at Kinsbourne and national wool prices, 1350–1395. Sources: Stern, Hertfordshire Demesne, 217–22; Farmer, ‘Prices and Wages’, 810; id., ‘Prices and Wages, 1350–1500’, 512–13.

and the relative price of rabbits rose significantly there was a marked shift towards commercial rabbiting on the sandy soils of the East Anglian Breckland. Mean annual cullings on the demesnes of Brandon and Lakenheath, for instance, rose more than fourfold from a total of 1,472 in the 1370s to 6,450 in the 1380s.61 With rising standards of living, the demand for better-quality bread grains and ale also increased, and many landlords responded by devoting a larger proportion of their land to the appropriate grains. For example, in ten counties around London, the proportion of cropped acreage devoted to brewing grains rose from 18 per cent in the years 1288–1315 to 27 per cent in the period 1375–1400. Meanwhile, the proportion of land given over to poorer bread grains such as rye or winter-sown mixtures fell from 10 per cent to 5 per cent.62 Rye, though, was still sown in some quantity in the fifteenth century in areas such as Devon, where the soil was less suited to the cultivation of wheat, but even here responsiveness to 61

Bailey, ‘Rabbit and the Medieval East Anglian Economy’, 6, 11, 12. Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 240. A similar trend is evident in Norfolk. 62

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changing crop prices remained high. For example, rye continued to be sown as a commercial crop on Tavistock Abbey’s demesne at Hurdwick, and the amount of land given over to it varied according to market prices. A drop in the price of rye between the 1410s and the early 1440s prompted a contraction in the acreage under the crop, but as prices recovered over the next twenty-five years, so the area under rye expanded. Likewise, when prices dropped and stayed low during the 1470s and then rose once again between 1482 and 1504, the acreage under rye fluctuated accordingly.63 Managerial Problems on the Demesne Farms of Great Estates But while effective decision-making can certainly still be found on the great estates in the later Middle Ages, examples of flexible and sophisticated demesne management became less and less common. Of course, this is partly because the majority of great landlords chose to lease their demesne farms in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. There must have been several factors that persuaded landlords and their advisers to abandon direct cultivation. The combination of falling prices and rising costs from the 1370s onwards was of course a major problem. There was also the difficulty of enforcing labour services, the high administrative costs, the need for a steady cash flow, and even the counsel of fashion. But it seems that at Wisbech the crisis was as much managerial as it was economic, for by the 1410s and 1420s the bishop of Ely was clearly finding it difficult to appoint reeves that were as skilled as their predecessors had been. Reeves now came and went with suspicious frequency, and the flexibility and commercial acumen which had formerly characterized decision-making were gone; the accounts for these years simply do not provide an accurate reflection of economic potential at that time. Strikingly similar developments can be found elsewhere, though the precise timing of the problem varied from place to place. At Wisbech the skills of farm managers played an important part in determining the success of the manor in the immediate aftermath of the Black Death, but not every landlord was so fortunate. For example, Cuxham had been served by just two reeves in the sixty years before the Black Death, but from 1349 until 1359 it was run by a total of ten different officials.64 This unusually fast turnover 63 64

Finberg, Tavistock Abbey, 102–3, 121–2. Harvey, Medieval Oxfordshire Village, 64.

Standards of Demesne Farm Management 1318/19

Robert Oldman

1328/29 Accounting year

217

Robert Oldman Robert Oldman

1341/42 1349/50

Hugh ate Grene William de Elmden

1353/54

Roger Poynaunt de Hameldone

1356/57

Roger Poynaunt de Hameldone

1357/58 0

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Extent to which the total value of actual wheat sales had gone from the lowest potential value towards the highest potential value

Fig. 7.8. How successful were demesne officials at Cuxham at maximizing the total sale value of wheat, given seasonal changes in wheat prices? Sources: Harvey (ed.), Manorial Records of Cuxham, 334–5, 372, 480, 531, 558–9, 573; MCR, 5867.

certainly hints at managerial problems, and the accounts yield tangible evidence of a decline in standards. Before the plague the Cuxham reeves played the grain market very successfully, judging by their astute timing of wheat sales during the course of the year. But after the Black Death officials were considerably less skilled. Employing the same method for measuring the success of grain marketing as described above, Figure 7.8 shows the extent to which the total value of actual wheat sales in seven accounting years had moved from the lowest towards the highest potential value given seasonal changes in the price of wheat recorded in the Cuxham accounts. In 1318/19, 1328/9, and 1341/2, Robert Oldman managed to secure sales that went respectively 65 per cent, 81 per cent, and 91 per cent towards the highest value. But in the decade after the Black Death the figure dropped to less than 35 per cent. In fact, the wheat sales made by Roger Poynaunt de Hameldone in 1357/8 went only 14 per cent along the line from lowest to highest potential values. Even by itself, such poor returns dented manorial profits significantly.65 But if this measure is indicative of the managerial 65 Had de Hameldone managed to push his wheat sales in 1357/8 even 60 per cent of the way along this theoretical line he would have raised income that year by 21s.;

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skills of these officials more generally, then Cuxham certainly did have a problem. Even though many demesne farms were enjoying considerable success at this time, it is perhaps no surprise that Merton College decided to lease this demesne in 1359. The immediate aftermath of the Black Death was clearly a difficult time to find an effective reeve.66 At the Suffolk manor of Walsham-le-Willows, the court rolls of 1350 and 1351 are unusually full of accusations against the two reeves that held office at that time. John Spileman, for example, was amerced the large sum of 40s. in November 1350 ‘because he did not perform his duties in a proper manner, and as a result a great part of the lady’s corn died in the autumn’. Two months later he was presented for a string of other offences, among them ‘that damage was caused in the lady’s wood by [his] defective custody’, ‘that he did not lie in the manor by night but withdrew outside the manor at will without leave’, and even that ‘he showed contempt to Henry the lady’s son insulting him’. For these misdemeanours he was fined a further 40s.67 Notably, the level of these fines is out of all proportion either to those listed earlier in this chapter for other manors or to fines levied against the Walsham reeves before the Black Death.68 There were clearly significant managerial problems on the Battle Abbey demesne of Marley at this time as well. Here, professional farm managers were hired instead of local reeves after the plague, possibly because no tenants were willing to take on the post, but plausibly also reflecting the perception that they could no longer deliver the goods. These professionals were initially tempted by high wages and generous extras such as coats, robes, and hoods, though they soon grew disillusioned after their corn allowance was reduced: as Searle commented, ‘the loss of his perquisites and the new availability of farmland to rent . . . may together go far to explain why as able a manager as Thomas atte Parrok did not remain in the abbey’s employ, although he remained in the district after 1359’. This date is significant because, with no a return of 90 per cent would have boosted this to nearly 35s. This is in the context of a manorial profit two years earlier (the only one recorded for the 1350s) of £10 13s.: ibid. 95. 66

As Chapter 4 showed, Wisbech also struggled to hang onto their reeves in the five years after the Black Death. 67 Lock (ed.), Court Rolls of Walsham le Willows, 1303–50, 335; id. (ed.), Court Rolls of Walsham le Willows, 1351–99, 29–30. 68 In the eighty-four court rolls that survive for this manor between 1316 and 1349, reeves were fined a total of 7s. 8d.


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reeves and no hired officials either, Marley went the way of Cuxham and was leased in 1359.69 Elsewhere, managerial problems seem to have arisen slightly later. For example, at Hampton Lucy in Warwickshire there are telltale signs of difficulties in the last thirty years of the fourteenth century, for in the eleven years for which accounts survive between 1371 and 1393—after which the demesne was leased—there were nine different reeves.70 At Bishop’s Clyst in Devon an administrative crisis came even later, in 1404–6, after which no one was prepared to be reeve and the post was abolished. From being run by a reeve and a bailiff, the demesne was now managed by the bailiff alone; indeed, after 1414 the estate supervisor stopped coming to the manor as well. The farm only survived in direct management because Robert Mayour, the last reeve, continued as bailiff until 1420, at which point it was leased. However, questions remain about how skilled a farm manager he was. The same acreage of oats—the most widely sown crop at Bishop’s Clyst—was often planted from year to year in the last decade or so of direct cultivation, suggesting a growing lack of flexibility to changing needs. More significantly, arable profits dropped from an average of just over £9 per annum in the years 1397–1401, when there were two officials in charge, to just over £4 per year when Robert Mayour acted alone.71 The problems with farm management in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries can be seen from another angle at Hinderclay. For much of the fourteenth century, farm management here was remarkably sophisticated, but the quality of decisionmaking seems generally to have become less effective as the century drew to a close.72 In part, this was a matter of changing managerial structure. During the 1350s and early 1360s Hinderclay appears to have been managed by three salaried officials: a reeve, a bailiff, and a ‘claviger’ (literally, keeper of the key). By the late 1360s, however, the office of reeve was discontinued, and then in the mid-1380s the services of the claviger were also dispensed with, leaving the 69

Searle, Lordship and Community, 304, 315–16, 320–3. Dyer, ‘Population and Agriculture’, 117–18. 71 Alcock, ‘East Devon Manor, I’, 143, 145, 148, 168–9. 72 This analysis of Hinderclay after the Black Death is based on Chicago UL, Bacon 468–510. For Hinderclay in the decades before 1349, see Stone, ‘Medieval Farm Management’. 70

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Table 7.1. Prices and profits at Hinderclay after the Black Death Years

Product prices (s.) Wheat (per quarter)

1350–75 1378–82 1386–95 1396–1406

7.41 5.99 3.95 5.54

(18) (5) (8) (5)

Barley (per quarter) 4.93 2.89 3.04 3.29

(17) (5) (8) (5)

Wool (per stone) 3.57 2.77 2.12 2.57

(2) (4) (7) (2)

Manorial profit (£)

52.2 28.9 39.5 26.2

(16) (5) (8) (5)

Note: The number of years used to calculate each figure is given in parentheses. Source: Chicago UL, Bacon 469, 471–86, 489–93, 496–501, 503, 505–10.

day-to-day running of the manor in the hands of the bailiff alone.73 Scaling down the local management of Hinderclay in this way cannot have been an entirely unwelcome development from the lord’s perspective, for it involved a cut in expenditure by the 1380s of about £6 a year. But it would only have continued to be so for as long as he could find a sufficiently skilled and trustworthy official. Between 1379 and 1406, shortly after which the demesne was leased, there were thirteen named farm managers at Hinderclay; but only one of them—John Waltham, who was bailiff from September 1385 to September 1395—seems to have been a success, as the comparison of prices and profits in Table 7.1 suggests. Prices of the three most important products at Hinderclay—wheat, barley, and wool—divide neatly into two periods: an ‘Indian summer’ of comparatively high prices up to the mid-1370s; and then lower prices from then until 1406. Notably, prices of all these products were at their worst from the mid-1380s to the mid-1390s, when John Waltham was in charge. Ignoring the years 1386–95 for the moment, the trend in profits is much as we would expect in the circumstances: comparatively high up to the mid-1370s, and much lower thereafter. But from the mid-1380s to the mid-1390s, when prices were at their lowest, recorded profits were remarkably good: even at this difficult time, it appears that John Waltham was able to squeeze considerably more profit from the manor than anyone else. 73 Notably, the expenses of the estate steward were given their own paragraph in the Hinderclay accounts from the late 1360s onwards, which suggests that his role as overseer became increasingly important as the local management team shrank. In fact, the steward’s expenses rose significantly in the 1380s as the responsibility for decision-making fell increasingly to the bailiff.


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Perhaps other bailiffs were simply stealing money, but an analysis of changes in receipts and expenses suggests that there was more to it than that. Some increases in receipts may have been fortuitous, but three changes are of particular note. First, harvest expenses were considerably reduced, a saving which can be attributed chiefly to the regular mowing, rather than reaping, of corn. Mowing was much speedier than reaping, and thus saved considerable quantities of labour and some expenditure on harvest food too: in fact, the total cost of harvesting a bushel of grain dropped by 20 per cent under John Waltham. Secondly, he reassessed the production of hay. The price of hay on the manor was stable during the 1370s but increased slightly in the 1380s. Compared to the rapidly falling price of grain, the relative price of hay thus rose spectacularly: in 1373 a cart of hay was worth only 33 per cent of a quarter of wheat, but this had risen to 87 per cent by 1385, and by the late 1380s and early 1390s a cart of hay in fact exceeded a quarter of wheat in value. John Waltham acted on this immediately, doubling the acreage of meadow within two years of taking office; as a result, the total value of hay sold or sent to the lord rose to 63s. in 1390 and 71s. in 1392. Thirdly, John Waltham, presumably in consultation with the estate steward, reoriented the Hinderclay sheep flock more towards breeding, so that the value of sales of livestock in the early 1390s was considerably higher than at any time since the Black Death. These changes would certainly help to account for the rise and then fall in profits: totting up the value of changes in income from grassland and livestock, and changes in expenses from harvesting between 1376–85 and 1386–95 produces a rise in profits of between £7 and £8; taking the same elements into account but comparing 1386–95 with 1396–1406 produces a drop in profits of exactly the same magnitude. The combination of the rising cost of labour and falling prices certainly created severe difficulties for farmers in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, but they do not necessarily imply that farming for profit was no longer possible. Indeed, the Hinderclay evidence indicates that farmers could continue to manage their resources successfully at this time by making careful—and sometimes relatively minor—adjustments to the running of their farms. This would certainly help to explain why lessees were willing to take on demesne land and how they were able to make a profit from it. Equally, the evidence from Hinderclay and elsewhere suggests

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that many of the farm managers that great landlords were able to secure during this period were considerably less flexible and less skilled than this: in other words, demesne managers not only faced considerable problems after the Black Death but farm management itself was increasingly also a problem.74 William Langland in fact seems to have been aware of such a development, for in Piers Plowman he draws a telling comparison between times past, when men ‘would tell their masters, from the quality of the seed they were given to sow, what kind of crops they could expect to obtain’ and give shrewd advice on ‘what grain to sell, what to consume, and what to keep by’, and the present (the late 1370s), when ‘None of them has any notion . . . how to go about things, or what skills to practise.’75 Managing a demesne farm had probably become more difficult since the Black Death. Langland indicates that climatic changes were partly to blame, but the problems were not simply exogenous. There may well have been increasing difficulties, for example, in controlling the labour force on these large farms. As we have seen, labour efficiency at Wisbech appears to have declined after the Black Death and similar problems were encountered elsewhere. At Alciston in Sussex the account roll for 1380–1 records that the tenants were unwilling to work because of ‘Jack Strawe and all his meynee’, but this lack of enthusiasm was confined neither to the year of the peasants’ revolt nor to customary workers.76 At Cuxham money was paid to the famuli in 1349 to encourage them to do the lord’s business better and two years later stocks were put up ‘pro famulis rebellosis’.77 Demesnes also experienced difficulties in hiring famuli at this time, to the extent that the reeve of Hardwicke in Gloucestershire had to take on the job of plough-holder for eighteen weeks in 1354, since the plough-holder himself had fled the manor.78 At Hinderclay the work rate of harvest labourers declined 74 Given the variation in the timing of the managerial crisis, those landlords who did not lease their demesnes as soon as prices fell in the mid-1370s should not necessarily be criticized for being conservative and unresponsive to changing 75 Langland, Piers Plowman, 179. economic conditions. 76 Farmer, ‘Famuli’, 230–1. 77 The attempts to encourage the famuli were not entirely successful, for in 1351–2 a cow died because of the cowman’s negligence: Harvey, Medieval Oxfordshire Village, 78–9. 78 Westminster Abbey Muniments, 8441, quoted in B. Harvey, ‘The Abbot of Westminster’s Demesnes and the Black Death of 1348–9’, in M. Meek (ed.), The Modern Traveller to our Past (forthcoming). I am very grateful to Barbara Harvey for allowing me to read the manuscript of this essay.


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steadily between 1330 and 1380, and even a sharp rise in the death rates of lambs on the bishop of Winchester’s estates and elsewhere can be blamed on the poor quality of shepherding after the Black Death.79 Once again this chimes with the complaints of contemporary social commentators such as Gower and Langland, who also convey a clear sense of just how rotten the job of motivating such a workforce must have been.80 But it was not just managing a recalcitrant labour force that made the job of reeve or bailiff unappealing in the late fourteenth century. As Dyer has suggested, local officials must have felt increasingly trapped between the expectations of lords and peasants.81 On the one hand, landlords were keen to try to maintain their income. But, on the other, villagers increasingly resented the imposition of seigneurial demands, and officials were presumably tainted by association as the lord’s representative. It is perhaps most common to envisage the ambiguity of an official’s position in terms of the collection of rents or the carrying out of court orders, but a local demesne reeve or bailiff would have been forced to negotiate a range of potentially tricky situations, not least the extraction of labour services, the fixing of wages, and the leasing of areas of the demesne. In so doing, not only were they criticized and sometimes fined by the lord and his auditors, but they were also the object of local villagers’ ire. Indeed, Matthew Gilbert, the reeve of Walsham-le-Willows, was twice assaulted in the summer of 1363, once by John Wauncy and once by Elias Typetot, both of whom resolutely stated in court that they could not deny the charge.82 One can begin to appreciate how the stresses and strains of being a reeve rendered the office less desirable in the late fourteenth century; in this context, it is highly significant that by the 1370s and 1380s unfree tenants were increasingly willing to pay large sums of money in order to exonerate themselves from having to take on this job. In Bishop’s Clyst, for example, Roger Austyn paid 20s. in 1375 to avoid being reeve,83 while the court rolls of the Middlesex manor of Tottenham record a protracted struggle in 1385 in which the lord’s 79

Chicago UL, Bacon 453–96; Stone, ‘Productivity and Management’, 18–20. Gower, Major Latin Works, 209; Langland, Piers Plowman, 67–9. 81 Dyer, ‘English Medieval Village Community’, 414. 82 Lock (ed.), Court Rolls of Walsham le Willows, 1351–99, 71. 83 Alcock, ‘East Devon Manor, I’, 169. At Hevingham Bishops in Norfolk a total of £2 15s. 1d. was paid in the years 1450–2 by tenants exonerating themselves from serving as reeve: Whittle, Development of Agrarian Capitalism, 51. 80

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first and second choice both refused the reeveship. An inserted note in the court roll reveals that the latter eventually crumpled under pressure, the lord having seized his land and goods. Even so, he was not the first choice of the lord and can hardly have been eager to perform to the utmost of his ability. Indeed, the appointment of a new reeve here was only prompted by the removal from office of the previous one; presumably he had not done the job to the satisfaction of the lord either.84 Still, the lord was at least able to appoint an officer; Abbot Hamo of Battle Abbey, on the other hand, was forced to act as his own steward at this time.85 The post-Black Death period was not just a time of difficulty; it was also one of opportunity. With much more land available, as well as openings in the cloth industry or in buoyant late fourteenthcentury towns, the opportunities for skilled people were both plentiful and considerably more attractive than working for the lord. Given the loosening of the bonds of serfdom as well, a managerial crisis and in turn the abandonment of direct demesne cultivation may only have been a matter of time. Indeed, the timing of these problems fits extremely well with what we know about the chronology of migration. As Britnell put it, ‘The movement of villagers away from their family lands to bargain for higher incomes or freer status was especially noticeable at the end of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth, when manorial custom was crumbling rapidly.’86 It surely reveals much about the sense of freedom and opportunity that the unfree tenant who had loyally and skilfully served as reeve on the Berkshire manor of Woolstone between 1359 and 1382 chose, and was able, to send his son away to school to prepare for entry into the priesthood and a new lifestyle.87 More generally, the pool of managerial talent available to landlords must have shrunk massively at this time; it is no coincidence that the collapse of demesne farming on the great estates occurred almost simultaneously. The Management of Small Estates and Farms in the Later Middle Ages We should not write off the administration of late medieval manors and farms. There are signs, for example, that rent-collectors and 84 86

Oram (ed.), Court Rolls, 37. Britnell, ‘Tenant Farming’, 621.

85

Searle, Lordship and Community, 263. 87 Greatrex, ‘Monastic Lord’, 11, 13.


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other officials associated with rentier management—which, of course, had now become the future of estate management—were generally highly competent and professional employees. More pertinently in the context of this book, there are also indications that the crisis in agricultural management affected larger landlords disproportionately. Indeed, there are several examples of small estates doing comparatively well in the fifteenth century, leading more than one historian to believe that the seigneurial economy of this period was ‘not as moribund and stagnant as often believed’.88 Unfortunately, the evidence that we have for small estates and farms in the fifteenth century is scattered and extremely fragmentary in comparison with the long runs of accounts that exist for the demesne farms of great estates in earlier times, and any conclusions must therefore be correspondingly tentative. The sheer structure of small estates probably gave them a significant advantage over their larger counterparts at this time. Several members of the gentry and some smaller religious houses were in fact able to build up relatively compact estates during the course of the fifteenth century, a process which clearly would have been difficult for larger landowners to emulate. John Stannford, for example, leased several Wiltshire manors between the 1420s and the 1450s that were all ‘in a very restricted part of the county, with each manor lying adjacent, or almost adjacent, to another of the manors on which he had secured a lease’. Meanwhile, the Catesby family of Warwickshire, who had originally held a scattered estate, ‘created a large block of land based on their own manor of Radbourne by obtaining leases on a nearby grange of Combe Abbey and properties of Coventry Priory’. Similarly, Merevale Abbey in the same county leased its more distant manors to leave itself with ‘a compact grouping of arable, pasture, meadow, and woodlands all within a five mile radius of the abbey’.89 These compact estates not only must have proved easier to manage, but also facilitated the development of a more integrated approach to land management in which different manors were put to different uses, as was the case on the Catesbys’ estate.90 Yet there must have been more to the resilience of some small estates and farms in the later Middle Ages than simply organization. 88 Watkins, ‘Landowners and their Estates’, 33. See also Postan, ‘Medieval Agrarian Society’, 595–6; Dyer, ‘Small Landowner’. 89 Hare, ‘Demesne Lessees’, 8–9; Dyer, ‘Warwickshire Farming’, 17; Watkins, 90 Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 191–3. ‘Merevale Abbey’, 92.

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Even maintaining a home farm cannot have been justified merely by the need to supply the household: with generally low prices and rising wages in the later Middle Ages, a poorly managed home farm would have been nothing more than a luxurious financial drain. Indeed, creating and maintaining a home farm required considerable investment on the part of the landlord and must have been deemed worthwhile financially.91 Part of the answer may well be that the management of small estates and home farms was not only less complex but also significantly better than it had been on the demesnes of the great estates in the aftermath of the Black Death. The idea of a more personal management style on smaller estates may well be a well-worn notion, but whether this involved actual hands-on management or simply keeping a closer eye on officials, close attention to details—as the Hinderclay evidence showed— could make a sizeable difference to profits. In this light, it is of more than just passing interest that one contemporary sermon complained that ‘Daily one hears how the curatus diligently examines his servants when they come to him, enquiring what sheep, lambs, sheaves they have, and whether they have as many that year as they had the last, and how many Marks he owns, and how many he can levy, and how they can sell everything at a better price.’92 The personal involvement of small landlords in estate management is well illustrated by the Cheshire demesne of Newton, the only manor on the estate of Humphrey Newton. During the years 1498–1506 Humphrey compiled a book of accounts recording the day-to-day running of his 258-acre mixed farm, and this shows his involvement at various levels. At times, he discussed contractual arrangements with his workers, paid marlers in person ‘at þe marle pit’, or negotiated with buyers and sellers at market, but his involvement clearly also extended to the careful planning and implementation of new projects. When considering rebuilding the corn mill, for example, he estimated ‘the sum of vantage and pleasur’ before proceeding. Likewise, before deciding to improve the soil through extensive marling, he calculated, alongside the current 91

For example, in developing their home farm during the mid-15th century, Maxstoke Priory acquired a large new farm, leased grassland for its horses, created further pastures by clearing overgrown land and extending parkland, carried out substantial building repairs, and bought large quantities of livestock: Watkins, ‘Landowners and their Estates’, 21, 27, 30. 92 Owst, Literature and Pulpit, 260.


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amount of seed sown and its yield, the household requirements for bread and ale, while in advance of constructing a fishpond he estimated both the length of time it would take to fully stock the pond and the financial return he could expect at that point. More practically still, before embarking on the building of a fulling mill he made a detailed list of ‘the specialized parts of the mill building and the number of trees and length of wood needed to make them’ and then ‘walked with [the builder] through Newton selecting the most suitable trees for the mill and noting where they were located on the estate’.93 Another key factor lying behind the apparent success of some small estates and farms in the later Middle Ages was probably the relationship between the lord or farmer and their workforce. The recalcitrance of workers appears to have been a significant problem for great landlords in the aftermath of the Black Death, but elsewhere such problems were plausibly circumvented to some degree. Some of the demesnes that were leased were split up into smaller plots of land, and these would have been proportionately more dependent on family labour.94 On small estates, the personal involvement of a resident lord may have aided the establishment of a more productive working relationship. Humphrey Newton, for example, gave most of his servants a bonus, which might take the form of a handkerchief, a pair of shoes, or simply cash. At a time when many labourers would probably have preferred to be hired on a more lucrative and flexible daily basis, it is revealing that Humphrey was able to secure many of his workers on annual contracts.95 Both the potential and the problems inherent in the lord–labourer relationship can be seen in sharp relief on the Suffolk manor of Easton Bavants, which John Hopton acquired in 1435. In 1429–30, under the lordship of Ela Shardlow, this manor had flourished, producing a profit of £38 in cash and provisions. But seven years later, shortly after John Hopton had taken over, the farm barely broke even. This was doubtless in part the result of deteriorating economic conditions—after all, prices of the two main 93 Youngs, ‘Estate Management’ (quotations at 133, 136); id., ‘Servants and Labourers’ (quotation at 159). 94 In Warwickshire, for example, almost one-fifth of demesnes were carved up in this way, sometimes—as in the cases of Packwood, Whatcote, and Quinton— between all the tenants of the manor: Dyer, ‘Warwickshire Farming’, 4–5. 95 Youngs, ‘Servants and Labourers’, 148–9, 153–4, 159–60; Bailey, ‘Demographic Decline’, 11–14.


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products, barley and wool, had fallen96—but this can hardly account for the total collapse in profits. A bigger problem was probably the difference between the two lords: Ela Shardlow, a widow since 1399, lived on her family property and was thus able to build up a good relationship with her employees as well as direct operations personally; John Hopton, by contrast, was a young outsider from Yorkshire and an absentee landlord. It is perhaps indicative of this difference that Nicholas, the shepherd at Easton Bavants, fled in 1437 having been accused of losing roughly oneeighth of the flock through negligence.97 Of course, by no means every member of the gentry was a good or willing farm manager, and standards of management would naturally have varied over time and from place to place. Nevertheless, with a good manager, the possibility of making a reasonable profit should not be overlooked, particularly at the turn of the fifteenth century and again at the turn of the sixteenth. The period of severe recession between the 1440s and the 1470s would have been much more problematic, as the correspondence of the Paston family amply demonstrates.98 Yet, the unusually good series of accounts for Elvethall suggests that, with the right person in charge, even arable farming could occasionally bring a modicum of profit at this time. Although Elvethall belonged to Durham Priory, it was in some ways managed as a small independent estate, for the hospitaller— under whose remit it fell—was encouraged to give it his close personal attention. As Figure 7.9 shows, under Thomas Haughton, who was hospitaller from 1466 to 1485, there was generally increased expenditure and increased profits. Part of this came from an expansion of barley production from 1466 onwards, which was justified by an increase in the price of barley relative to wheat. But, significantly, it appears that Haughton was an exceptionally good farm manager. After his period in charge, expenditure continued to grow as more wheat was sown in the 1480s, accompanied by increased weeding and manuring; total production increased as a result, but the expansion was plainly ill-advised, for profits dwindled rapidly from the mid-1480s onwards.99 96 97 98 99

Farmer, ‘Prices and Wages, 1350–1500’, 504, 514. Richmond, John Hopton, 79–82. Britnell, ‘Pastons and their Norfolk’; Hatcher, ‘Great Slump’. Lomas, ‘A Northern Farm’.

Standards of Demesne Farm Management 40

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Thomas Haughton Hospitaller 1466–85

Profits Expenditure

Profits and expenditure (£)

35 30 25 20 15 10 5

1514

1509

1504

1499

1494

1489

1484

1479

1474

1469

1464

1459

1454

1449

1444

0

Fig. 7.9. Profits and expenditure at Elvethall, 1444–1514. Source: Lomas, ‘Northern Farm’, 32–3, 44–5, 50–1.

The absence of data on standards of management has tended to lead to its neglect as a dynamic factor in determining the performance of demesne farms, in favour solely of variations in social and economic conditions. But such variations in themselves ensured that quality of management was far from constant. Although the standard of medieval farm management was generally much higher than hitherto thought, the Wisbech case study and the data analysed in this chapter indicate that the quality of decision-making varied from one individual to the next, from generation to generation, place to place, and possibly even according to the nature of the estate. For the great landlords, leasing their demesne farms was not just a question of profit, for there were many factors that had to be taken into account. In turn, however, the standard of management could make a significant difference to economic performance, and should not be overlooked. Indeed, the archives of large estates, voluminous though they are, may exaggerate economic problems at the turn of the fifteenth century; it is plausible that agricultural production on small

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farms and estates, for which documentary evidence is comparatively sparse, could be more efficient and profitable. Nevertheless, there was of course a threshold below which even the best manager could not rescue a situation; at times in the later Middle Ages, and especially during the recession of the mid-fifteenth century, this threshold was probably breached more often than not.

8 The Use of Agricultural Techniques in Medieval England Exploring the mental world of medieval reeves is intriguing in its own right, but of equal importance for our understanding of medieval agriculture are the consequences of the decisions that they took. Profitability has already been touched upon, but decisions that changed the way in which land and livestock were managed also exerted a considerable influence over trends in agricultural productivity: more weeding brought higher grain yields, more fodder lower mortality rates among sheep, and so on. Such practices were not the only cause of rising or falling yields, yet the data contained in the Wisbech accounts suggest that they were the most significant. But establishing this is one thing; explaining why the use of techniques changed over time and varied from place to place is quite another. Indeed, this is a question that strikes at the heart of our interpretation of the evolution of agriculture, with ramifications not just for medieval demesne cultivation but also for people and periods less well served by surviving records. It sometimes seems as if the history of agriculture represents the last outpost of the Whig interpretation of the past, for it frequently appears to be based on the belief that the maximization of output was a cherished goal for all farmers. Implicit in this are two linked assumptions about technology in past societies: that agricultural development was constrained by available technology; and that farmers would inevitably have employed the techniques for raising yields that were known to them. Agricultural progress, in this view, can simply be measured by the extent to which productivity increases over time, as can be seen in the ongoing debate about the timing of the ‘agricultural revolution’ in England.1 By the same 1 See e.g. Overton, Agricultural Revolution; Allen, ‘Tracking the Agricultural Revolution’.

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token, since high productivity is assumed to be so desirable, situations in which available technology was apparently not used, or in which yields fell, are often diagnosed as socially, economically, or environmentally problematic. Marxist analysis of the Middle Ages, for example, allows for the non-use of contemporary agricultural technology, but this is interpreted as the inevitable consequence of an exploitative feudal society.2 Farmers who did not use available technology might also be cast as ignorant or stubborn. Kindleberger, for example, largely ascribed the ‘failure of British agriculture to transform’ in the late nineteenth century to ‘the major weakness of the farmers’—‘their ignorance of new methods and unwillingness to learn’.3 And as we have seen in the medieval period, if the intention of farmers was to maximize output, then declining yields of grain or wool must be indicative of a crisis, whether caused by soil exhaustion, climatic change, labour shortage, or some other adverse force. But what the Wisbech account rolls clearly indicate is that medieval farmers, for the most part, employed yield-raising techniques— which in a pre-industrial context covers a broad range of methods, including high labour inputs—only when they found it in their interests to do so. For commercial farmers, the selective abandonment of such output-boosting but costly techniques over time was a perfectly rational response to falling prices and deteriorating economic conditions. Equally, the comparatively high yields achieved through intensive farming were also a response to very particular circumstances. In fact, though we tend to envisage farmers in the Middle Ages as incapable of getting higher yields from their land or livestock, there are good examples of medieval farmers systematically attaining levels of productivity that were much higher than the norm. For example, sows at Hinderclay generally produced litters of between five and seven piglets in the early fourteenth century, but in 1333–4—on the strength of high market prices for pigs—much more fodder than usual was purchased for the pigs with the result that the mean litter size rose to over ten piglets per sow.4 Similarly, the auditors of the accounts at Kinsbourne discovered in 1367 that land set aside for the famuli was producing yields that were double those found on the demesne land, suggesting that these 2 3 4

Brenner, ‘Agrarian Class Structure’, 31–3. Kindleberger, Economic Growth, 239, 245. Stone, ‘Medieval Farm Management’, 631–2.

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workers were spending considerably more time tending the crops reserved for their own use.5 Indeed, as Campbell has shown, exceedingly high yields were occasionally achieved on demesne farms during the medieval period.6 Even on the bishop of Winchester’s estates, which have long been renowned for their low yields, productivity could sometimes reach extraordinary levels: the yield of spring barley, for instance, reached 40 bushels per acre at Brightwell in 1327, and 54 bushels per acre at Ivinghoe thirteen years later.7 Of course, good harvests were doubtless aided by favourable climatic conditions, and exceptional years are just that—the exception rather than the rule—but these figures nevertheless indicate that the techniques and farmers of medieval England were by no means incapable of producing very high yields indeed. So though techniques for raising yields were known and available in medieval England, it appears that they were often used with discretion on demesne farms. But while this may run counter to our initial instincts and assumptions, we should not be surprised that this was the case, for in selectively adopting such techniques medieval reeves were only acting in the same way as their counterparts in other areas of pre-industrial economic activity, where the ability to increase output beyond normal levels when conditions permitted was appreciable. For example, the government’s desire for bullion at the turn of the fourteenth century suddenly made heavy investment in deep silver mining justifiable, and very large numbers of workers and highly advanced and expensive drainage techniques were temporarily employed to extract large quantities of silver from Devon mines.8 Similarly, the cloth factories established by William Stumpe of Malmesbury and John Winchcombe of Newbury during the trading boom of the first half of the sixteenth century, though short-lived, reveal the high levels of production that could be achieved under certain conditions.9 Coal output could also be boosted enormously and at great speed, for when the building of a wagonway in 1699 substantially reduced the cost of transport from Gibside colliery to the Tyne, coal output there increased almost fourfold in just three years.10 5 6 8 9 10

Stern, Hertfordshire Demesne, pp. xxxix, 129. 7 Campbell, ‘Agricultural Progress’. Titow, Winchester Yields, 98, 100. Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England: Towns, 67–8. Gough, Rise of the Entrepreneur, 36–44. Hatcher, History of the British Coal Industry, 554.

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The relationship between investment and output that can be observed in these examples of industrial entrepreneurs and commercial farmers accords with the principles of production economics. In theory, the most profitable level of production is usually not the level at which total output of the product is highest, since disproportionately large and costly quantities of inputs would be needed to achieve this. In terms of assessing productivity change over time, the important point is that as product prices or unit costs change, so different levels of inputs become appropriate in order to continue producing at the most profitable level: as grain prices increase, so it makes sense to raise inputs, with the result that yields are likely to rise; likewise, if prices fell, it would be more profitable to reduce inputs rather than maintain the status quo. Of course, there are many unpredictable factors in agricultural production which ensure that economic theory and practical reality seldom coincide, but it nevertheless remains the case that economic efficiency does not equate to the maximization of yields, and that for commercial producers it is the former that is by far the most important.11 Fourteenth-century reeves may not have expressed it in the same terms as modern economists, but there seems no reason to doubt either their understanding or their application of the principles involved; as the preceding chapters have demonstrated, there was no lack of commercial acumen in the medieval countryside. The first two sections of this chapter use these points to build on the Wisbech case study and explore chronological patterns in the use of techniques in medieval English demesne agriculture, first in the context of the early fourteenth century and then in the period after the Black Death. But while the economics of production is fundamental to our understanding of change over time in demesne yields, it is also argued that agriculture cannot be analysed in a vacuum of prices and wages. The use of techniques was partly conditioned by cultural context, especially in the aftermath of the Black Death. Moreover, no rational farmer ignores his or her environment, and the third section of this chapter suggests that this factor cannot be overlooked when considering the geography of technological use. Even so, this does not alter the fact that commercial farmers in medieval England did not normally attempt to maximize yields, and the final sections of the chapter go on to 11

Hill, Introduction to Economics, 124–38.


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suggest that this perspective can shed a significant amount of light on medieval peasant farming and our understanding of agricultural development more broadly.12

An Ecological Crisis before the Black Death? The decline in grain yields that occurred on many English demesne farms in the decades before the Black Death has, as we have seen, been interpreted as evidence of a severe ecological crisis. For some, this crisis was defined by soil exhaustion; for others, climatic change was to blame. But either way, the message is broadly the same: farmers in this period were losing the battle with nature. Of course, no discussion of agricultural change can ignore the impact of environmental conditions, yet the Wisbech evidence suggests that their role in this context has been exaggerated and that declining demesne yields during the early fourteenth century can be interpreted another way. In short, they were greatly influenced by a series of deliberate and appropriate technological choices: as grain prices dropped in the 1330s and 1340s, the proportion of land under legumes at Wisbech was reduced, manure was used less effectively, and labour inputs in weeding and fallow ploughing were reduced. Far from being an inevitable consequence of technological inadequacy, injudicious over-cultivation, or natural disaster, falling yields at this time were primarily determined by economic strategy. And Wisbech was not alone, for the scaling down of inputs was an appropriate response to changing economic circumstances for commercial farmers throughout the country. Economic conditions at a national level deteriorated considerably during the course of the early fourteenth century, particularly during the 1330s and 1340s. The economic situation facing farmers at this time can effectively be summarized by examining the changing ratio between prices and wages; Figure 8.1 shows the results of dividing the yearly price of wheat by yearly wages for reaping and binding corn between 1200 and 1450. As this graph shows, the optimum period in economic 12 This chapter will concentrate primarily on arable farming. For discussion of changing techniques in medieval English sheep-farming, see Stone, ‘Productivity and Management’.

Ratio: prices (s./qu.)/wages (s./day)

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Farm Management in Medieval England (1316: 36.1) 26 24 22 20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 Black Death 0 1200 1225 1250 1275 1300 1325 1350 1375 1400 1425 1450

Fig. 8.1. Ratio between wheat prices and wages for reaping and binding corn, 1200–1450. Sources: Farmer, ‘Prices and Wages’, 788–91; id., ‘Prices and Wages, 1350–1500’, 502–4, 516–18.

terms for grain production was c.1270–1320; thereafter, the ratio dropped sharply. And, as production economics dictates, when the ratio between prices and wages falls, so a lower intensity of production becomes more profitable. While we should not expect medieval demesne managers to have operated at absolutely the most profitable level of production, we would nevertheless expect a farm that was being run to generate cash in a businesslike way to use yield-raising techniques more selectively by the 1330s and 1340s.13 Indeed, the significance of the price–wage ratio for medieval demesne production is strikingly highlighted at Cuxham, the account rolls for which contain some of the most complete information on weeding inputs that are available for this period. Figure 8.2 shows the number of hired man-days spent weeding at Cuxham between 1290 and 1348 together with the national price–wage ratio and reveals just how closely the two variables moved: as the ratio rose and then fell in the years 1290–1305, so it was tracked by the quantity of weeding inputs; even after the temporary rise in 13 Changing weather conditions also affect the production function for profitmaximizing farmers, lowering it in poor years and raising it in good years; to some extent, therefore, the optimum quantity of inputs in the early 14th century may have been reduced by climatic phenomena as well.


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500 Weeding man-days Price–wage ratio

450

35 30

350 25

300 250

20

200

15

150

Price–wage ratio

Weeding man-days

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100 5

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0 1346

1342

1338

1334

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1326

1322

1318

1314

1310

1306

1302

1298

1294

1290

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Fig. 8.2. National price–wage ratio and hired man-days’ weeding at Cuxham, 1290–1348. Sources: Farmer, ‘Prices and Wages’, 790–1, 814–16; MCR, 5814–72; Harvey (ed.), Manorial Records of Cuxham, 185, 201, 218, 235, 253, 270, 304, 434.

the price–wage ratio during the famine years of 1316–17, the amount of weeding peaked shortly afterwards. The cumulative impact was considerable, for as the price–wage ratio declined in the medium term, so too did the number of hired man-days spent weeding, from an average of 173 man-days per year in the 1290s to 137 in the 1320s. Subsequently, as the price–wage ratio dropped even further, the use of hired labour for weeding at Cuxham virtually ceased altogether. Weeding did not stop entirely, for several accounts from the mid-1330s onwards make it clear that some customary labour services were used for this task instead, though unfortunately it is impossible to tell how many.14 This would probably have brought total weeding inputs at that time more in line with the price–wage ratio than Figure 8.2 suggests, but even so 14 MCR 5861, 5869, 5870. The deployment of customary labour for this task was plainly a new development, since labour service accounts for 1330/1 and 1332/3 make no mention of any weeding being done by this form of labour: Harvey (ed.), Manorial Records of Cuxham, 140–3. No labour service accounts survive thereafter.

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the demesne was plainly less committed to this task than it had been at the turn of the century.15 The decline in yields of wheat and dredge here was probably not caused by the inherent inability of fourteenth-century agriculture to sustain a balance of nutrients in the soil;16 instead, some of the soil nutrients may simply have been channelled into boosting the growth of weeds rather than crops. Weeding was not the only yield-raising technique to be used more selectively. It is usually assumed that all manure will inevitably find its way onto arable land one way or another, but the Wisbech accounts demonstrate that this was not the case: by the 1330s and 1340s not only were sheep occasionally pastured elsewhere but the hand-spreading of manure was also performed less assiduously. Similar patterns are implied elsewhere. At Downham in Cambridgeshire the amount of labour employed for gathering and carting muck declined sharply in the mid-1330s. Until then, much of the work had been done by labour services: in 1319–20, for example, fifty labour services were used for gathering muck in the courtyard, fifty-five for carrying it from there to the fields, and twenty-three for spreading it; in 1330–1 labour services were even used to gather muck in Downham park after ‘wild animals’ had pastured there. By the 1340s, however, no labour services were used for the task at all and though some labour was hired instead, the numbers employed were small.17 At Downham it is difficult to relate these developments to changes in livestock numbers, but at Hinderclay details about manuring in this period can be compared to a distinct increase in livestock numbers from the 1320s onwards.18 As well as the falling amount of labour used for this task, it is notable how the tone of the Hinderclay accounts changes. In the 1310s and 1320s great interest was shown in the details of manuring: the buildings from which dung was collected (including the hen-house), the fields on which it was subsequently spread, the acreage that was treated, whether winter-sown, spring-sown, or fallow land was to benefit, and the time of year that the job took 15 Numbers aside, the transfer from hired to customary labour would doubtless have had a detrimental effect on the quality of the weeding workforce at Cuxham: Stone, ‘Productivity of Hired and Customary Labour’. 16 Newman and Harvey, ‘Did Soil Fertility Decline?’ 17 For example, 13d. was spent on muck-spreading in 1342–3, 12d. in the following year, and just 6d. in 1347–8: CUL, EDR D10/2/3, 5, 9, 11, 18. 18 The mean number of livestock units at Hinderclay in the 1320s was 59, but 92 in the 1330s and 1340s: Chicago UL, Bacon 449–68.


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place. By the 1330s and 1340s, however, not only had the number of customary works used for manuring declined, but all signs of interest in recording the details of manuring had disappeared. Chronological trends in the addition of other forms of fertilizer can sometimes be traced. For example, in eastern Norfolk there was a distinct decline in the collection and use of nightsoil in both the late 1290s, at the time when demesne farm management generally became tighter, and again after 1320, when economic conditions worsened.19 There appear to have been similar phases in the application of marl on demesnes. On some farms, marling clearly declined during the second quarter of the fourteenth century, as at Ebony in Kent, where the cost of applying marl, manure, and lime amounted to £56 5s. 8d. in the years 1303–11, but virtually disappeared from the records from the late 1320s.20 Yet, as with nightsoil, there seems to have been something of a watershed in the late thirteenth century as well. Marl was often used abundantly before then: for example, 66 acres were marled on the Suffolk demesne of Redgrave in 1252, 50 acres at Saperton in Sussex in 1270, and 2 carucates at Siston in Gloucestershire in 1273. But thereafter recorded acreages of marling were often much lower, even on the earl of Norfolk’s demesne of Hanworth, where the annual average in the years 1272–1306 was 51=4 acres.21 Where the trend in marling can be traced on individual manors the chronology seems to be much the same: for instance, marling was substantially reduced on the bishop of Winchester’s group of demesnes at Taunton in the 1280s, while at Hinderclay there was no expenditure at all on marling after 1282.22 It is probably no coincidence that the price–wage ratio in Figure 8.1 reached a noticeable peak in the 1270s and first started to show signs of decline during the late 1270s and 1280s. Marling was hugely expensive and may thus have been one of the first techniques to be used with more discretion as the economy tightened and then turned in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Nightsoil was less expensive than marl, but nor was it cheap to buy or transport; by the late 1290s, when 19

Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 362. Mate, ‘Medieval Agrarian Practices’, 23. For other examples from this area, see id., ‘Estates of Canterbury Cathedral Priory’, 15. 21 Hallam, ‘Farming Techniques’, 286; Brandon, ‘Farming Techniques’, 314; Dyer, ‘Farming Techniques’, 378; Campbell, ‘Agricultural Progress’, 34. 22 Thornton, ‘Level of Arable Productivity’, 127; Stone, ‘Medieval Farm Management’, 627. 20

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taxation added to the growing economic squeeze, even demesne managers close to Norwich seem to have questioned the degree to which such applications were financially worthwhile. Even so, the declining labour intensity of demesne arable production was chiefly a phenomenon of the second quarter of the fourteenth century, and was not just confined to weeding and manuring. For example, at Downham the number of customary and hired man-days spent harrowing and breaking clods of earth with mattocks prior to sowing declined respectively by about one-third and one-half between 1318–32 and the 1340s.23 Similarly, on the Kent manors of Loose and West Farleigh expenditure on tasks such as spreading fresh earth over arable land, picking up large stones from the fields, and lining gutters with stone, fell at about the same time.24 These examples provide a good impression of declining labour intensity, but a more consistent overall measure has been calculated for the bishop of Winchester’s demesne of Rimpton. Here, labour inputs per sown acre in arable husbandry declined by almost 30 per cent between 1283–1321 and 1335–49, as labour services were increasingly commuted, fewer wage labourers were hired, and even some of the famuli were laid off.25 The level of labour inputs was probably the most important determinant of medieval yields, but it was not the only one. The relationship between wheat prices and the proportion of land under beans, peas, and vetches at Wisbech in the early fourteenth century strongly suggests that medieval farmers appreciated the benefit of sowing legumes and planted them as a technological investment; the influence of wheat prices on legume cultivation can be discerned at demesnes such as Hinderclay and Cuxham as well.26 Given this and the fall in wheat prices, it is no surprise that the proportion of land under legumes often fell during the 1330s and 1340s, regardless of how widely legumes were sown in the first place. For example, at Lakenheath in Suffolk the proportion of land under legumes 23

CUL, EDR D10/2/2–11, 13, 17–18. Mate, ‘Medieval Agrarian Practices’, 23–4. Thornton, ‘Demesne of Rimpton’, 93, 248; id., ‘Determinants of Land Productivity’, 206. 26 Stone, ‘Medieval Farm Management’, 624–5; Harvey (ed.), Manorial Records of Cuxham, 735–6; Farmer, ‘Prices and Wages’, 791. Correlating the proportion of land under legumes at Cuxham each year between 1328 and 1348 with national wheat prices produces a Spearman rank coefficient of 0.528, which is statistically significant at a 5 per cent level of probability. 24 25


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fell from 4 per cent in the 1320s to 1.5 per cent in the 1340s; at Rimpton the proportion fell from 9.3 per cent in 1297–1336 to 6.5 per cent between 1337 and 1349; while at Martham in Norfolk 22.3 per cent of land was under legumes between 1318 and 1335, but 16.8 per cent in 1340 and 10.5 per cent in 1342.27 For demesnes such as Martham, where legumes were an integral part of the cropping system, this development must have had a considerable impact on yields, particularly of wheat. But even where legumes were less conspicuous, such as the bishop of Winchester’s manor of Wield, the course of legume cultivation seems to have been influential. Here, the area devoted to legumes decreased steadily from a mean of 10 per cent in the 1310s to 7.1 per cent in the 1340s, at exactly the same time as wheat yields per acre declined; in fact, correlating these two variables for the period 1310–49 produces a Spearman rank coefficient of 0.484, which is significant at a 1 per cent level of probability. In other words, there is only a 1 per cent chance that the trend in legume cultivation on this demesne was not linked to the trend in wheat yields.28 But while the proportion of land under legumes is a useful measure, it fails to take account of any changes that might have taken place in the main purpose of legume cultivation. As we have seen, legumes were sometimes sown with their beneficial effect on arable yields firmly in mind, but this was not always the case: when planted in the spring phase of a crop rotation rather than as a replacement for fallow, it is more likely that they were grown first and foremost for livestock, both as a source of fodder and to improve the quality of fallow grazing. At the same time as the proportion of legumes declined on some demesnes, a change in objective—from nitrogen fixation to fodder provision—appears to have been taking place on others, and may help to explain why the proportion of legumes did not always decrease at this time.29 At Downham, for example, the proportion of land under legumes initially fell from a high point of 39.3 per cent in 1321–2 to 15.7 per cent in 1337–8, but then began 27 Bailey, Marginal Economy?, 210; Campbell, ‘Field Systems’, 35. I am grateful to Chris Thornton for allowing me to see the year-by-year cropping data that he 28 HRO, 11M59/B1/65–101. extracted from the Rimpton accounts. 29 Such a change in emphasis was probably prompted by a range of factors: movements in grain prices; the local availability of grassland; the price of other forms of winter fodder; and the market for livestock products. Rising hay prices or falling wool prices, for example, would have encouraged the production and use of cheaper forms of fodder for sheep.

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to increase once again during the course of the 1340s, reaching 29.3 per cent in 1347–8. This trend probably masks a change in use, for by the 1340s wheat was no longer grown commercially and there are distinct signs that legumes were now sown chiefly as fodder: indeed, in 1348–9, the only year for which field names are recorded, peas were sown in the same field as barley, which suggests that the land sown with legumes that year subsequently lay fallow.30 At Hambledon, where the proportion of legumes also increased in the late 1330s and early 1340s, the correlation that existed between grain prices and the acreage under legumes between 1327 and 1337 in fact vanished over the next decade.31 The general decline in the technical standards of demesne arable husbandry during the early fourteenth century can be seen in a variety of other ways. Seeding rates on the Winchester estates often declined between the late thirteenth century and the second quarter of the fourteenth.32 Walter of Henley emphasized that bringing in new seed from outside the farm each year would noticeably benefit yields, but at the bishop of Ely’s demesne of Great Shelford the quantity of new seed bought annually was roughly halved after 1325.33 At Rimpton the process of ‘furlong rejuvenation’, in which ‘a group of well-manured headland and pathway grazing strips surrounding cultivated furlongs were added to the arable, and other parts of those furlongs laid down to rest in turn’, was no longer carried out after 1311.34 Cost-cutting meant that even the oxen who pulled the manorial ploughs were sometimes less well fed. At Cuxham the amount of food given to oxen dropped from 0.82 bushels of oats per night in 1297–9 to 0.7 in 1317–19, 0.63 in 1327–30, and 0.47 in 1346–8, despite the number of oxen remaining pretty much the same. Not only would this have influenced their work rate, but it would presumably have affected the total amount of manure they produced over the course of the year as well.35 30 CUL, EDR D10/2/3–5, 11–13, 17–18. A similar pattern is found at Twyford in Hampshire, where the proportion of land sown with legumes fell to a low point in 1337 but then rose again in the 1340s, by which time the crop was increasingly used 31 HRO, 11M59/B1/80–98. as livestock fodder: HRO, 11M59/B1/76–101. 32 By the second quarter of the 14th century, wheat was less densely sown on 76 per cent of manors, oats on 69 per cent of manors, and barley on 41 per cent of manors: Titow, Winchester Yields, 40–2. This would have had a significant impact 33 on yields per acre in particular. Miller, Abbey and Bishopric, 106. 34 Thornton, ‘Determinants of Land Productivity’, 201. 35 Harvey (ed.), Manorial Records of Cuxham, 292–3, 309, 327, 345, 363, 383, 404, 422, 440.


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On many demesne farms, then, deteriorating economic conditions led to fewer yield-raising techniques being used in the 1330s and 1340s than had been the case at the turn of the fourteenth century. Consequently, declining yields at this time were not necessarily the result of soil exhaustion or climatic change but instead the logical outcome of a deliberate and appropriate economic strategy. Peculiar though it might at first seem, falling yields on a commercial farm in these circumstances were in fact an indication of rational and efficient farm management; indeed, a strategy that maintained or even raised the level of inputs in this situation would have been economically unresponsive. So while Postan was wrong to interpret falling demesne yields as he did, so too are those historians who champion sustained high levels of yields in commercialized areas of the country;36 in the 1330s and 1340s farms in these regions would have been better off financially by reducing inputs and hence yields. Of course, some commercial farms probably responded more effectively to the changing economic conditions than others. For instance, the bishop of Winchester’s demesnes of Crawley and Twyford were both situated close to Winchester and sold a similarly high proportion of their grain at market, yet in terms of responding to falling prices it appears that the latter was more efficiently managed. Between 1325–32 and 1335–45 the price–wage ratio fell by 23 per cent, but while wheat yields per acre at Twyford declined by 28 per cent in these years, thus falling roughly in line with the economy, those at Crawley were just 5 per cent lower.37 In fact, there are indications that the management of arable operations at Crawley was comparatively inflexible. For example, expenditure on weeding remained at 5s. in eight out of nine years between 1317–28 and in eight out of ten years in the period 1336–45.38 Not only was there little flexibility from year to year, there was no drop in weeding expenditure when the price–wage ratio fell either. This cannot have been profitable, and may well have contributed to the relative stability in yields on this demesne. Yet while falling demesne yields at this time could be a healthy sign rather than a bad omen, there are important caveats to bear in 36 It has been suggested, for example, that officials at Canterbury Cathedral Priory cannot have made calculations about the beneficial impact of marling on yields at their manor of Ebony or they would have continued marling into the second quarter of the 14th century: Mate, ‘Medieval Agrarian Practices’, 23. 37 38 Titow, Winchester Yields, 88–90. HRO, 11M59/B1/72–81, 88–97.

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mind. First, on a remote but nevertheless commercial farm, inputs and yields would already have been at a relatively low level, and while they might subsequently have declined to some extent, the scope for further reductions was restricted. So while expenditure on hiring weeders at Twyford fell steeply during the 1330s and 1340s, expenditure on this task at the more remote demesne at Hambledon was considerably lower to begin with and so only drifted gently downwards during this period. It is perhaps no surprise, therefore, that in contrast to the precipitous fall in wheat yields at Twyford, wheat yields at Hambledon stayed relatively stable during this period.39 Secondly, yield trends for different crops need to be interpreted with care. For example, since oats can withstand poor growing conditions better than most other crops, yields of this crop may have fallen in a more pronounced way in the late thirteenth century, when it was increasingly likely to be sown on poor soil, and improved considerably in the early fourteenth century, when the worst land was the first to be withdrawn from cultivation. Oats were also less likely to be intensively farmed in 1300, so were in any case less likely to suffer from the subsequent withdrawal of inputs. Thirdly, since a crop that was produced for market may well have been managed in a different way from one produced primarily for consumption, the deterioration in the economic situation may not necessarily have resulted in lower yields on farms dedicated to estate consumption. In short, trends in yields must be interpreted in context. Comparatively stable yields, for instance, might be seen as efficient at Hambledon, but not at Crawley. Most importantly of all, falling demesne yields in the 1330s and 1340s need to be understood in the context of economic deterioration, and do not necessarily reflect technological constraints or environmental change.

The Application of Techniques after the Black Death Many of the same themes can be seen at work in the later Middle Ages. Although yields of some crops on some demesnes were higher in this period, due to the shedding of poor-quality land,40 falling 39

HRO, 11M59/B1/83–101; Titow, Winchester Yields, 88–90. For example, where the contraction in cultivation was greatest in Norfolk, yields either fell less than elsewhere (as at Sedgeford) or rose to some extent (as at 40


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productivity seems to have been the prevailing experience. This has variously been ascribed to the long-term exhaustion of the soil, to a deteriorating climate, or to a sheer lack of workers in the aftermath of the Black Death, but a more significant factor was probably a rational response to the changing economic situation. As Figure 8.1 shows, the price–wage ratio recovered slightly in the third quarter of the fourteenth century, but then slumped to a new low by about 1380, where it stayed for the next seventy years or more. A similar shift took place in the economics of wool production, and when farmers responded by adjusting the way in which they managed their flocks, fleece weights fell.41 The consequences of the darkening economic sky for commercial arable farming were very similar, and indeed historians have recently discerned a reduction in the intensity of demesne agriculture in the later Middle Ages. The Wisbech evidence adds substance and chronology to this general impression, but also highlights the deliberate nature of the withdrawal from ‘high farming’, the exceptions to this trend, and the need for subtlety when interpreting this unique and intriguing period of history. The overall decline in labour intensity is one of the most striking aspects of demesne agriculture after the Black Death, and not just at Wisbech. At Martham famuli inputs per sown acre declined by 21 per cent between 1300–24 and 1400–24, while the number of hired man-days spent weeding each sown acre on this demesne probably declined by about 75 per cent; in other words, roughly four times as much labour was lavished on weeding Martham’s crops in the early fourteenth century than was the case a century later.42 At Downham there was a massive decline in labour inputs over a similar period. In 1318–32, 193 man-days per 100 sown acres were spent weeding, harrowing, and clod-breaking each year; by 1412–24 this had fallen to seventy-seven, a drop of 60 per cent.43 Even demesnes where the intensity of cultivation was lower in the period before the Black Death made do with fewer labour inputs in the late fourteenth century. At Rimpton, for example, the number of days worked per acre was Taverham). Similarly, the crop to benefit most in terms of productivity was oats, since this was planted on the poorest soils in the years before the Black Death: Campbell, ‘Land, Labour, Livestock’, 174–8. 41

Stone, ‘Productivity and Management’. Campbell, ‘Agricultural Progress’, 38. CUL, EDR D10/2/2–10, 28–30, D10/3/1. Although there was a considerable reduction in clod-breaking by the 1360s and 1370s, the reduction in weeding and harrowing was most marked between then and the early 15th century. 42 43

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reduced by 22 per cent between 1275–1324 and 1350–1403, while at Hinderclay the small amount of weeding and muck-spreading that had been done prior to 1349 had all but dwindled away by the end of the century.44 Similarly, no extra workers were hired for tasks such as weeding on the Warwickshire demesne of Lighthorne by the 1390s, while in the Vale of Berkeley marl pits are thought to have been abandoned by the mid-fifteenth century.45 With known techniques for raising yields now used even more selectively or abandoned altogether, it is no wonder that productivity collapsed on many demesne farms. But the implications of this point extend beyond mere agronomics, for it also challenges some persistent assumptions about medieval agriculture. For example, in his eye-catching study of smoke-blackened thatch, Letts found an extraordinary number and range of medieval weeds, some of which are common today, including nettles, stinking mayweed, and thistles, others of which are nearly extinct, such as cornflowers and darnel.46 Holding these remarkable finds in your hands and in the secure knowledge that they once grew in medieval arable fields, it is easy to reach the conclusion that agricultural technology at that time was incapable of dealing effectively with weeds.47 But the chronological context of this sample is seldom considered: approximately three-quarters of Letts’s material on smoke-blackened thatch comes from the fifteenth century, when weeding on demesne and probably peasant land would have been a very low priority indeed. Crops at that time would have been more infested with weeds, but this stemmed primarily from the decision to spend less time weeding the growing corn, not from an inability to do the job thoroughly. There are similar misconceptions about the use of manure after the Black Death. Historians have long been perplexed by the apparently paradoxical situation that while livestock numbers rose considerably at this time, crop yields—which should have benefited from all the extra dung—often declined. But because of low grain prices and the cost of hiring muck-spreaders, not all manure was used for the benefit of arable land. The Wisbech accounts are 44

Thornton, ‘Determinants of Land Productivity’, 205; Chicago UL, Bacon 491–8. Dyer, ‘Farming Practice’, 231–2. Letts, Smoke Blackened Thatch, 39–41. 47 Indeed, an article on smoke-blackened thatch in The Guardian on 2 Oct. 2003 simply stated that ‘Weeds must have been a real problem.’ 45 46


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particularly informative here, revealing that the mountains of extra manure produced in the 1410s and 1420s were carted away from the farmyard but were then left unspread on the side of the fields. There are similar indications elsewhere: even at Martham, one of the most intensively farmed demesnes in the country, there was a distinct decrease in the amount of manuring done by hand after the 1360s.48 It is possible that the heaps of dung that must have accumulated on this and other demesnes were subsequently raided by peasants for their land, though even they would not necessarily have wanted to devote more time and energy to muck-spreading in this period. Indeed, one Gloucestershire tenant complained in 1438 that his subtenant had failed to manure his land every year; while this might well imply a ‘normal thoroughness’, it also reveals a lack of attention by the early fifteenth century.49 In fact, there are numerous references in this period to the obstruction and nuisance caused by ‘Mukkehilloks’, as they were called in a Stoneleigh court roll.50 Nor might dung just be left to decompose, for it had other uses, most notably as fuel, but also—in the case of pigeon dung—as a salve for those who contracted plague.51 But whether left or used for some other purpose, the lesson is clear: a farmer was only going to spend time or money spreading manure if he considered it worth his while. The application of labour in yield-raising tasks is fairly clear-cut, but the use of legumes is more complex. It seems safe to conclude that legumes no longer played such an integral role in maintaining arable yields after the Black Death, but it is also clear that this manifested itself in different ways. At Wisbech it was demonstrated not just by the falling proportion of legumes, but also by their changing position in crop rotations, and a shift in managerial attitude: the acreage under legumes was now dependent upon manorial fodder requirements rather than the price of wheat. In some other parts of the country, such as Sussex, Kent, and Norfolk, legumes simply lost ground.52 But of more moment elsewhere was the use to which legumes were put; although the proportion of land under 48

49 Campbell, ‘Field Systems’, 113. Dyer, ‘Farming Practice’, 232. Id., ‘Warwickshire Farming’, 29. 51 Cohn, Black Death Transformed, 62. The use of dung as fuel may well have increased during the period 1455–75, which temperature data suggest was exceptionally cold: Mann et al., ‘Northern Hemisphere Temperatures’. 52 Campbell, ‘Fair Field’, 63. 50

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legumes might increase, the crop was often now grown primarily with livestock in mind. As livestock numbers rose after the Black Death, demand for fodder increased, and some farms—especially in areas of scarce grassland resources—turned to legumes to fulfil these requirements. Pasture was scarce on the Gloucestershire manors of Bourton-on-the-Hill and Todenham, and here the percentage of legumes—which were sown as just another spring crop— rose from 14–15 per cent in the second quarter of the fourteenth century to over 30 per cent by the turn of the fifteenth.53 The demand for fodder might reveal itself in other ways. At Hinderclay, for instance, the proportion of legumes initially dropped from 16 per cent in the years 1289–1331 to 13.8 per cent in the 1380s, but then increased during the years 1390–1406 to 20.1 per cent. The explanation seems to be that when the price of hay increased, the bailiff chose to sell hay and produce cheaper fodder for the demesne livestock instead.54 Much as in the decades before the Black Death, then, the later Middle Ages saw a deliberate reduction or abandonment of certain agricultural techniques with the result that yields generally fell. Yet the Black Death ushered in a very different world, and the problems faced by farmers in this era and the solutions they adopted were sometimes strikingly different. Indeed, while some techniques were less widely used, there was also experimentation with ‘new’ forms of technology. It has long been recognized that the first recorded examples of convertible husbandry date from the Middle Ages, but the extent to which this and other experiments with crop rotations were chiefly a phenomenon of the post-Black Death period has not been fully appreciated. Farm officials at Wisbech experimented with convertible husbandry and more complex four- and five-course rotations at the turn of the fifteenth century, and this is a chronology common to many other demesnes. For example, more complex and flexible rotations were introduced throughout the home counties and the west midlands at this time.55 Four-course rotations are also recorded on the Cambridgeshire manors of Elsworth and Graveley, at Crawley in Hampshire, and on the Wiltshire manors of 53 Harvey, Westminster Abbey, 472–3; Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 77; Farmer, ‘Grain Yields on Westminster Abbey Manors’, 346. 54 Chicago UL, Bacon 423–58, 485–510. 55 Roden, ‘Field Systems’, 50–1; Mate, ‘Farming Practice’, 273–5; Harvey, ‘Farming Practice’, 255–8; Dyer, ‘Farming Practice’, 223–5.


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Longbridge and Monkton Deverill, while Norfolk provides several examples of five-, six-, and even seven-course rotations in the late fourteenth century.56 Likewise, convertible husbandry has been noted at a number of places at the turn of the fifteenth century, including Hampton Lucy in Warwickshire, the Norfolk manors of Felbrigg and Taverham, Cargoll in Cornwall, and throughout Kent and Sussex.57 Such innovations in the engine room of medieval agriculture were probably made for a variety of reasons: the incentive to experiment was doubtless greater in a period of depressed grain prices; more intensive rotations would have raised overall output at a time of poor returns per acre; and convertible husbandry was not only well suited to a time when livestock farming was comparatively important, but may also have required lower labour inputs, since fertility was maintained chiefly by periodic resting. Innovations in cropping systems were not confined to the period after the Black Death, but even before 1349 the conditions in which such changes were implemented were not dissimilar. For example, convertible husbandry was used on some fields at Wisbech and on the Norfolk manor of Bircham in the 1330s and 1340s, a period of lower grain prices.58 Nor was it just difficult economic conditions that encouraged the adoption of convertible husbandry, but difficult environmental conditions as well, as the early use of this technique on the Devon manors of Tiverton and Topsham suggests.59 In other words, convertible husbandry appears to have been used in circumstances that were less amenable to arable farming. As such, it was occasionally in evidence before 1349, but was increasingly adopted in the wake of the Black Death. So although these were techniques that were used more widely over the course of the fourteenth century rather than being abandoned, a familiar concept nevertheless emerges: certain techniques may well have been common knowledge, but that does not necessarily mean that they were adopted indiscriminately. The use of convertible husbandry in the Middle Ages has attracted considerable attention, but the early adoption of scythes 56

Britnell, ‘Farming Practice’, 198–9; Miller, ‘Farming Practice’, 286; Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 295–6. 57 Dyer, ‘Warwickshire Farming’, 13–14; Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 294–5; Fox, ‘Farming Practice’, 309; Mate, ‘Farming Practice’, 276. 58 Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 268–9. 59 Fox, ‘Field Systems’, 93.

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for harvesting corn has not. Mowing corn with a scythe was much speedier than cutting it with a sickle, and consequently helped reduce labour costs and raise labour productivity. In English agriculture the big breakthrough on this front came in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, yet scythes were already used for this task in medieval Europe, the first written evidence for it coming from Flanders and parts of Germany in about 1300.60 In fact, scything corn is also documented in England at around this time, though again it became much more common after the Black Death. At Wisbech a small proportion of beans and peas or oats were occasionally mowed in the early fourteenth century, but mowers were regularly employed alongside reapers in the years 1348–53, 1389–1402, and 1411–29. Notably, these runs coincide with the most difficult periods economically: wages were high and the workforce dislocated in the immediate aftermath of the Black Death; while in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the use of scythes seems to be related to periods of particularly low grain prices. A few acres of corn were mown at Hinderclay in 1357, and from 1386 the scythe was rapidly adopted, so that by the 1390s often a third or more of all crops was mown; even some wheat and rye were occasionally harvested in this way. It clearly was considerably faster (in 1395 each acre of barley took 1.16 days to mow but 1.75 days to reap) and saved a considerable amount of money on both labour and harvest food.61 Even so, scything was not consistently used for harvesting for many centuries, chiefly because it brought higher wastage of grain, as more of it was knocked to the ground.62 But in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, when grain prices were low and wages high, the savings to be made on expensive and inefficient reapers outweighed the potential return on slightly higher yields; it is yet another example of the selective adoption of technology. Both the scaling down of certain techniques and the adoption of others were the result of deliberate choices by farm managers. But in the aftermath of the Black Death, landlords and their officials were also faced by problems beyond their control. One factor which must have affected the application of agricultural techniques and the level 60 Thoen, ‘Birth of ‘‘the Flemish Husbandry’’ ’, 81; Poulsen, ‘Agricultural Tech61 Chicago UL, Bacon 471, 476, 487–510. nology’, 137. 62 It has been estimated that 10 per cent of grain would have been lost by harvesting it with a scythe: Comet, ‘Technology and Agricultural Expansion’, 24.


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of yields was the motivation of labourers. Customary tenants were often more reluctant to perform their labour services after the Black Death, and where such services were still enforced they may well have been performed with even less gusto. By this time, hired workers performed the majority of work on demesne farms, but the efficiency with which casual labourers and even the famuli worked probably also deteriorated in the decades after 1349. Furthermore, as the Wisbech evidence suggested, decisionmaking was not the only influence on the size of the demesne labour force in the later Middle Ages, for continued outbreaks of plague regularly depleted the labour supply. In the century after the Black Death there were a further twelve outbreaks of plague, some of which seem to have been severe.63 During these outbreaks landlords appear to have had difficulty mobilizing labour, partly perhaps because of local mortality, but mainly because many people upped sticks and temporarily moved away as rumours about the advance of plague reached their ears. Difficulties of this kind are certainly suggested by anecdotal examples. The villeins at Great Shelford ought to have ploughed 182 acres in 1350, but on account of the plague they ploughed only 62.64 In 1362, following the next outbreak, the reeve of Admington in Warwickshire failed to have the lord’s corn weeded. Then in 1379—at the start of the fourth outbreak of plague—no fallow ploughing could be done at Blackwell in the same county because of ‘the shortage of servants’.65 As Chapter 5 revealed, the problem of finding labour in plague years can be demonstrated more systematically by looking at fluctuations in the supply of customary labour, where it was still used; the same holds true for the Hertfordshire manor of Kinsbourne. Figure 8.3 shows the number of customary reaping and ploughing services that were used at Kinsbourne between 1362 and 1385, and reveals that there were significant dips in the use of customary labour during or just after plague years in 1362, 1369–71, 1374–6, and 1381. In the late 1360s and 1370s there was a lag of a year between dips in the use of 63 In parts of Wiltshire and Hampshire the outbreak of 1361 is said to have been as devastating as that of 1348–9, while the 1390 outbreak in Leicestershire was regarded as the ‘great pestilence’: Nash, ‘Mortality Pattern’, 36; Miller, Introduction, 6. 64 Page, End of Villeinage, 22. The Shelford demesne also suffered badly in 1361, with ‘no crops being reaped and but little seed sown’: Darby, Medieval 65 Dyer, ‘Warwickshire Farming’, 15. Cambridgeshire, 17.


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Value of customary labour used (s.)

35 30 25 20 15 10 5

Reaping Ploughing 1384

1382

1380

1378

1376

1374

1372

1370

1368

1366

1364

1362

0

Fig. 8.3. Customary reaping and ploughing at Kinsbourne, 1362–1385. Source: Stern, Hertfordshire Demesne, 226–7.

reaping services and those in the use of ploughing services, but this makes sense given that reaping and winter ploughing in the same calendar year are recorded in different accounting years, and suggests a summer outbreak of plague in each case. Similarly, at Rickinghall in Suffolk the use of Monday works—the most onerous of all labour services on this manor—dipped significantly in 1349, 1361–3, 1369, 1376, and 1389–91, all of which were plague years.66 These intermittent plague-related labour problems appear to have had a significant impact on crop yields. On the estates of the bishop of Winchester, the overall wheat yield ratio fell below 3.3 bushels per bushel sown in sixteen out of eighty-three harvests between 1349 and 1453; twelve of these sixteen low yields occurred during or immediately after years of plague.67 So while crop yields were generally low during this period because of deliberate decisions to reduce inputs, yields were exceptionally low in plague 66 67

Miyoshi, Peasant Society, 176. Farmer, ‘Prices and Wages, 1350–1500’, 506–8.


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years; decision-making was not responsible for all movements in productivity, but equally this evidence emphasizes the importance of labour for maintaining levels of arable productivity. The adoption of techniques and hence levels of productivity at this time was probably also influenced by standards of farm management. Under efficient demesne managers, we would anticipate that arable productivity on a commercial farm would broadly follow trends in the price–wage ratio. But as landlords found it increasingly difficult to secure effective farm managers in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, so the connection between expected and actual yields may often have been broken. At Wisbech wheat and mixtill yields closely followed the trend in the price– wage ratio from the Black Death until about 1410, but during the next two decades yields were much higher than might be expected. This coincides precisely with the point at which farm management at Wisbech became considerably less effective, and the evidence suggests that reeves were using husbandry techniques at a level that was not justified by the economic conditions. Likewise, at Crawley, where farm officials were generally less responsive to changing conditions, expenditure on weeding actually increased during the last quarter of the fourteenth century, when the economic situation must surely have counselled otherwise.68 Just as falling yields can be explained by a rational decision to reduce inputs when the economic situation demanded, so rising yields at certain times can be an indication of economic inefficiency.

The Geography of Technology in Medieval England The evidence presented throughout this book demonstrates that the use of agricultural techniques exerted a significant influence over the course of yields on medieval demesne farms. But the implications of examining the adoption of agricultural technology are not restricted to this alone. The remainder of this chapter briefly reflects on some of these wider implications, beginning with the geography of demesne agriculture. All else being equal, yields would have varied from place to place according to the nature of the soil; indeed, it is probably no surprise 68

Gras and Gras, Economic History, 334–6.

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that the highest-yielding demesnes in the country were in north-eastern Norfolk, for the ‘naturally rich soil’ in that area invariably gave ‘splendid results’, as Channing remarked in 1897.69 Nevertheless, methods of husbandry also made a considerable difference to productivity. So why did the nature of crop rotations, the use of legumes, labour inputs, and seeding rates vary so widely across the medieval countryside? Historians have identified a number of possible answers, including the nature of the soil, local custom, the diffusion of ideas, and proximity to market.70 It is probably fair to say that the last of these, the market, is currently thought to have been the most influential, a conclusion with which the findings of this book would appear to concur. However, technological mentalities are harder to assess on a geographical basis. Any comparison of one farm with another is necessarily blurred by the changing nature of cultivation over time and the uneven and sporadic survival of documentation. But spatial analysis is rendered even more complex by the sheer number of factors that need to be taken into account. In a local case study, soil type and location are constant, and allowances can to some extent be made for changing institutional requirements. But assessing geographical variation in agricultural techniques is another matter, for the environmental, economic, and institutional circumstances of each farm differed significantly. Nor is it simply a matter of numbers, for this has critical implications for the interpretation of evidence. This book has demonstrated that careful responses to market forces were an integral part of the exploitation of medieval demesne farms; but the clarity with which economic responses resonate through this book may partly be explained by the lack of background noise generated by other factors. In fact, this is not just a book about the economics of production; it is a book about decision-making, and in responding rationally to their situation, officials on different demesnes would have been influenced not only by market forces but also by the various other factors that shaped the circumstances of their individual farms. This is well illustrated by one of the most basic choices of all: the nature of cropping. Campbell’s analysis of the geography of 69

Channing, Truth about Agricultural Depression, 7–8. See e.g. Mate, ‘Medieval Agrarian Practices’; Langdon, Horses, Oxen and Technological Innovation, 254–65; Campbell, ‘Diffusion of Vetches’; Bailey, Marginal Economy?, 85–96; Campbell et al., Medieval Capital, 128–38. 70


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demesne cropping systems suggests that the distribution of different crops and rotations was influenced by a range of stimuli. Of the seven types of cropping system that he identified for the period before the Black Death, only one appears to have been prompted exclusively by economic location, in the shape of demand for cheap bread from London and local markets. Another was encouraged primarily by environmental circumstances, for the three-course cropping of wheat and oats was particularly appropriate to heavy land, while most of the remaining systems seem to have been prompted by a combination of market and environment. For example, demesnes growing mainly rye with barley appear to have responded to ‘commercial opportunities offered by cheap water transport in combination with relatively poor soils’, not least on the light sandy soils in the immediate hinterland of Norwich. In fact, the extensive cultivation of oats is explained in terms of market, environment, and patterns of consumption, for this was sometimes implemented to meet the fodder demands of urban market or monastery, but was also a cropping regime suited to the environment of the north and west of England, to reclaimed marshland, and to heavy, water-retentive soils.71 Indeed, it could be argued that the environment was of prime importance in determining the system of cropping at a regional level. For instance, a rotation dominated by spring-sown crops was to be found at this time across much of Suffolk, on the clay loams, yet other rotations were used on the sandy soils of the Breckland and the Sandlings and on the heavier clays of north-east Suffolk.72 Attempting to determine why one demesne farm devoted a higher proportion of its land to legumes than another is no simple matter either. Proximity to market certainly appears to be part of the answer, as the large proportion of legumes sown in eastern Norfolk and eastern Kent implies, but it was not the only factor. Cultivation of legumes was also triggered by the need for fodder, sometimes because of unusually high levels of consumption, but often because of the limited extent of grassland resources. For example, legumes were sown copiously at Hardwicke in Gloucestershire as pigs were fattened there for the monks of Westminster Abbey, and on the Nottinghamshire demesne of Wheatley on account of the shortage 71

Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 252–75. Mark Bailey, ‘Interesting Aspects of Suffolk Field Systems’, Paper presented at the Cambridge Medieval Economic and Social History Seminar, Nov. 2002. 72


256 100 90

Legumes (acres)

80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100 110 120

Wheat (acres)

Fig. 8.4. Acreage of wheat and legumes on the Kent manors of Canterbury Cathedral Priory, 1322. Source: Smith, Canterbury Cathedral Priory, 140.

of grassland in that area.73 Yet, disentangling the influence of the market from the need for fodder can sometimes prove difficult, for pasture was generally in shorter supply in the commercial heart of the country. Moreover, a further strand needs to be added to the explanation, for legume cultivation often went hand in hand with the sowing of wheat. As Figure 8.4 shows, the acreage of wheat and the acreage under legumes on the Kent manors of Canterbury Cathedral Priory was very closely related, and a similar relationship holds true elsewhere.74 Strategies could vary enormously, even on demesnes situated within only a few miles of each other, from those sowing no wheat and no legumes to those sowing considerable amounts of both, as was the case on a clutch of manors close to the Thames between Esher and Staines.75 Varying the proportion of land occupied by legumes according to the amount of wheat sown 73 Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 166–7; Raftis, ‘Farming Techniques’, 332, 338–9. 74 For example, on the estates of the bishop of Winchester and in the East Anglian Breckland: HRO, 11M59/B1/86; Bailey, Marginal Economy?, 139. Correlating the acreage of these crops on the Kent manors of Canterbury Cathedral Priory results in a Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.877, which is significant at a 0.1 per cent level 75 Campbell et al., Medieval Capital, 123–4, 130, 135. of probability.


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was rational in terms of soil nutrition, since wheat took more nutrients from the soil than any other crop; but, by the same token, the distribution of wheat can hardly be said to be defined by economics alone, since it was ‘environmentally more circumscribed in its cultivation than any other crop’.76 Geographical variations in labour inputs are generally more difficult to establish, since not all accounts record daily wages for hired labour or list the use of customary labour services, and the extent of famuli involvement in certain tasks is usually impossible to ascertain. Nevertheless, there are indications that even levels of labour inputs were not just influenced by market demand, although this was clearly of great significance. On the bishop of Winchester’s demesnes in Hampshire and east Wiltshire, for example, expenditure on weeding per 100 sown acres in 1333 generally declined as distance from Winchester increased. Similarly, as Table 8.1 shows, weeding inputs were very high at Martham, just outside Norwich, rather lower in Downham, Cuxham, and Checkendon, which were situated slightly further away from the largest commercial centres, lower still in Hambledon and Hinderclay, which were more remote still, and extremely low on the north Yorkshire demesnes of Malham and Halton. However, there are significant anomalies in both of these patterns, some of which are probably explained by soil type, since more fertile soils—regardless of location—also encouraged a higher level of weed growth. Likewise, the use of some ‘fertilizers’ was partly determined by local availability, as the abundant application of sand or seaweed in more distant, coastal parts of the realm suggests, and in the case of marl by the nature of the land due to be treated.77 Indeed, soil type would even have played a significant part in determining the amount of labour required for ploughing, since light soils could be ploughed relatively easily and quickly, while heavy soils were time-consuming to plough and required more ploughmen to get the job done while conditions permitted. Since the total amount of labour on a farm 76 Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 218; Campbell et al., Medieval Capital, 123–5. Wheat was in fact often grown most widely at some distance from large markets, since it was able to withstand high transport costs; given the correlation between wheat and legumes, this emphasizes the need to look beyond market proximity as an explanation for variations in legume cultivation. 77 Hatcher, ‘Farming Techniques’, 38; Miller, ‘Farming Techniques’, 404; Jack, ‘Farming Techniques’, 442; Hall, Fertilizers and Manures, 217; Overton, Agricultural Revolution, 108.


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Table 8.1. Estimated weeding inputs before the Black Death Demesne

Years

Man-days’ weeding per 100 acres sown Hired and customary

Wisbech (Cambs.) Martham (Norfolk) Cuxham (Oxon.) Downham (Cambs.) Checkendon (Oxon.) Sevenhampton (Wilts.) Wield (Hants.) Hambledon (Hants.) Crawley (Hants.) Hinderclay (Suffolk) Twyford (Hants.) Malham (Yorks.) Halton (Yorks.)

1314–48 1300–24 1319–34 1318–38 1272 1275–88 1300–48 1326–48 1321–48 1314–47 1325–48 1300–25 1300–19

Hired only

Customary works only

144 139 75 71 61 59 50 41 28 25 21 12 4

Note: Where sources give only total expenditure on hired labour, the number of man-days has been calculated using the daily wages for weeding recorded in the Cuxham accounts. Sources: Wisbech Barton account rolls, CUL, EDR D8; Campbell, ‘Agricultural Progress’, 38; Harvey (ed.), Manorial Records of Cuxham, 320, 339, 357, 377, 397, 734–5; MCR, 5819–40, 5843–7, 5853–8, 5863–4; CUL, EDR D10/2/2–12; Postles, ‘Cleaning the Medieval Arable’, 134–5; HRO, 11M59/B1/56–100; Stone, ‘Medieval Farm Management’, 627; Kershaw and Smith (eds.), Bolton Priory Compotus, 100–552; Kershaw, Bolton Priory, 33.

would have varied considerably according to the number of famuli ploughmen, it may well have been the case that the overall application of labour on demesne farms was as much a matter of environmental conditions as of economic circumstance.78 Geographical variations in seeding rates perhaps provide the best illustration of how the technological decisions of medieval farm managers must have been informed by the realities of their environment. The density with which a crop was sown was a significant 78 Indeed, at Martham—one of the most intensively farmed demesnes in Norfolk, but in an area of light soils—there were 10.4 days worked by the famuli per acre sown in the period 1300–24, whereas on the bishop of Winchester’s estates in 1341–2 there were 12.9 famuli man-days worked per acre (assuming that each worked 250 mandays per year): Campbell, ‘Agricultural Progress’, 38; Farmer, ‘Famuli’, 215, 218.


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determinant of yield per acre; indeed, seeding rates were comparatively high in productive regions such as eastern Norfolk and eastern Kent, and particularly low on the low-yielding Somerset demesnes of the bishop of Winchester.79 Proximity to large urban markets may partly account for this difference, but seeding rates appear to have been determined by a range of environmental factors as well. As Brandon indicated, the high seeding rates on the coasts of Kent and Sussex also reflect the need to smother weeds on marshland soils, to offset the loss of seed to birds, and to counteract dry spring weather.80 But the impact of the environment may have been greater still. It is usually assumed that all land on a medieval field would have been sown, but this was not necessarily the case. To aid drainage in areas of heavy soils in particular, land was ploughed into ridges and furrows, the remnants of which can still be seen across parts of the landscape today. As several agricultural writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries made clear, it was often profitable only to sow the ridges in these fields because of the threat of water standing in the furrows during periods of heavy rainfall. As Thomas Stone put it, This system [draining fields by furrows] was unsatisfactory; much good soil was eroded away and the furrows were often full of water so that not more than half the land is worth occupying, viz. from the ridges half way down to the furrow. The remainder is so chilled with water, and so robbed of manure, from its being washed into the furrows, that the grain produced thereon is of little or no value.81

Nathaniel Kent added that standing water in the furrows would simply rot any crop that was planted there.82 Such a threat must have been particularly apparent to farmers during the early fourteenth century, ‘a period of extreme and unstable weather conditions’, characterized by heavy rainfall, storm surges, and flooding.83 Profit-conscious demesne officials in areas of heavy soils may well have sown only the better-drained ridges of land at such a time. Elsewhere, on drier land that naturally drained more easily, there is 79

Campbell et al., Medieval Capital, 131, 137–8; Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 311–14, 335; Titow, Winchester Yields, 42. 80 Brandon, ‘Farming Techniques’, 320–2. 81 Allen, Enclosure and the Yeoman, 119. 82 Williamson, ‘Post-Medieval Field Drainage’, 41. 83 Bailey, ‘Per impetum maris’, 189.

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less evidence of ridge and furrow, and farmers were probably able to sow a larger proportion of each field. So while we cannot entirely rule out the possibility that higher seeding rates indicate the sowing of more seed per square yard, they may largely in fact have been found in areas where soil conditions permitted more of each acre of land to be sown. This, at least, seems to be the conclusion from combining documentary with landscape evidence. For example, the high seeding rates of medieval Kent coincide with an area of little ridge and furrow.84 More pertinently still, high seeding rates in north and east Norfolk match areas where soils were light and evidence for ridge and furrow is scant, but in south and west Norfolk are to be found both lower seeding rates and surviving examples of ridge and furrow.85 Just as it was rational for demesne officials to adjust the intensity of farming as economic conditions changed over time, so it was appropriate for them to tailor the use of yield-raising techniques to their economic and environmental situation. Consequently, low crop yields and comparatively extensive systems of agriculture do not necessarily signify either the absence of technological knowledge or an inappropriate course of economic development, either in areas of poor soil or in remote and landlocked regions, as the example of the Waveney valley, which separates Suffolk from Norfolk, demonstrates. The demesne at Thorpe Abbotts has been roundly criticized for being ‘resistant’ to the replacement of oxen with horses, and—in terms of yields—performing ‘badly’. More damningly, cropping systems in this area have been characterized as comparatively backward, the demesnes of Rickinghall and Redgrave following a ‘relentless rotational regime of dubious agronomic wisdom’, which, together with those at nearby Hinderclay and Thorpe Abbotts, ‘display some of the worst features of medieval cropping’.86 It seems more likely, however, that 84

Campbell et al., Medieval Capital, 131, 137–8; Mead and Kain, ‘Ridge-andFurrow’. 85 Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 314; Liddiard, ‘Distribution of Ridge and Furrow’, 3; Corbett and Dent, ‘Soil Landscapes’. This, of course, has massive implications for our understanding of yields, in particular the relevance of yield ratios (used by contemporaries) and yields per acre (favoured by most historians). Notably, though, this is immaterial to the discussion of yield trends at Wisbech, since fairly constant seeding rates meant that trends in yield ratios and yields per acre were almost identical, as Fig. 2.1 illustrates. 86 Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 263, 265–6, 418–20.


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officials on these demesnes were aware of more ‘advanced’ techniques but simply adopted them with discretion. After all, demesnes on heavy land such as this ‘required larger, more cumbersome teams which worked more slowly’ and seldom obtained high yields.87 Officials at Redgrave and Rickinghall clearly also appreciated the effects of three-course rotation and the cultivation of legumes, since more conventional or more flexible rotations were implemented elsewhere on the demesnes. In fact, following a ‘relentless’ rotation on part of the land was more cunning than might at first appear. Productivity was certainly low, but—as at Hinderclay—these farms were probably run for high cash returns rather than high yields.88 As the famous Rothamsted experiments demonstrated, there is a point beyond which yields on continuously cropped (and unmanured) land no longer fall.89 If yields at Redgrave and Rickinghall were not intended to be high, nor were falling precipitously, then it made sense to keep some of the land under continuous cultivation. In fact, this system of continuous cropping was set up in an ingenious way: the only wintersown cereal involved was the hardy rye crop; the likelihood of crop-specific weeds, pests, and diseases taking hold was minimized by changing the type of crop each year; and by alternating between winter-sown and spring-sown crops the land in fact lay fallow for six months in every two years. The resources of medieval demesne farms were often exploited in a much more rational way than we hitherto thought, with officials responding to a variety of stimuli. This rationality was refracted through a medieval lens, but rationality it nevertheless was. Nor should we forget that, though the documents refer to land held by people high up the medieval social scale, the majority of the decisions that have been discussed were made by local, unfree peasants acting on behalf of their lords. In fact, the implications of this evidence for our understanding of the thoughts and actions of the medieval English peasantry run deeper than this. For while demesne farms seldom aimed to maximize land productivity through the lavish application of agricultural techniques, the same cannot necessarily be said of smallholding peasants.

87 89

88 Ibid. 358–9, 419. Stone, ‘Medieval Farm Management’. Postan, Medieval Economy and Society, 77–8.


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The Level of Peasant Yields We are never going to have much more than scraps of information about peasant farming in medieval England. Nevertheless, it is critical that we glean what we can about how and with what success medieval peasants farmed their land. After all, landlords may dominate the sources, but in 1300 they cultivated only one-fifth of the country’s arable land.90 Since peasants made up the bulk of the population, and agriculture was their major source of food and income, the way in which they farmed their smallholdings in fact lies at the core of our understanding of the medieval economy and society. At no point is this more true than at the turn of the fourteenth century, when population was at its medieval peak, the demand for land was extraordinarily high, and the threat of hunger and starvation loomed large. Yet, despite its undoubted importance, we have no firm sense of how much grain peasants might have been able to harvest from their plots of arable land. An obvious working assumption is that yields on peasant land were the same as yields on demesne land; alternatively, it has been argued that peasant yields would have been significantly lower, since ‘the higher quality of the lord’s land, his superior command over capital, equipment, pastures and folds, was bound to tell’.91 But this is really little more than guesswork. This discussion is speculative, too, but an understanding of technological mentalities on demesne farms enables us to provide a degree of illumination in the dimly lit world of medieval peasant farming. So far, we have been concerned with large farms; indeed, in the century before the Black Death the average sown acreage on demesnes for which account rolls survive was 200 acres.92 By contrast, peasant holdings were mostly very small at that time: 72 per cent of tenant landholdings in Suffolk were 10 acres or less; in Sussex the equivalent figure was 63 per cent, and in Lancashire 59 per cent.93 Some peasants may have held more than one holding, but even so many must have been at or near the threshold of subsistence, for it has variously been estimated that an average family would have needed a minimum of between 10 and 18 acres just to 90 91 92 93

Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 58–9. Postan, Medieval Economy and Society, 138–9. Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 69. Hatcher and Bailey, Modelling the Middle Ages, 45.


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subsist.94 As a result, the aims and objectives of most peasants would have differed significantly from those of demesne managers: while demesnes were ultimately farmed for profit, whether through market sales or by consuming produce at low cost, the first priority for small peasant farmers was subsistence. With different objectives, a smallholder’s approach to the use of agricultural techniques would have been different as well. On demesnes, techniques for raising yields were used selectively; even on intensively farmed demesnes, the most profitable level of production was not that at which yields were highest. But on peasant smallholdings in the preBlack Death era, the incentive to use the techniques available for raising yields would have been much stronger; after all, these families were simply trying to survive. The extent to which some techniques were ‘available’, however, is debatable. In particular, a peasant’s supply of manure may have been limited by a relative lack of livestock and restrictions on pasturing arrangements.95 But while the difficulties for peasants should not be underestimated, neither should they be overplayed. Indeed, peasants were not the only ones to face problems, for livestock resources on ecclesiastical estates were severely reduced during episcopal or abbatial vacancies and often remained at a low level for several years beyond.96 Moreover, some tenants clearly had sizeable flocks and herds: on the Cambridgeshire manor of Downham, for example, the tenants accused of damaging the lord’s crops with their sheep in July 1330 included Adam Buk with eighty sheep, Simon Buk with forty, John Cok with thirty, Simon Cardinal with thirty, and Geoffrey Scut with twenty; later on that summer, Robert the son of Isabel of Coveney was fined in the Downham court for allowing twenty heifers to trespass.97 Some demesnes in fact gained a considerable income from leasing out areas of grassland to local farmers, and great households plainly acquired large numbers of animals from these producers.98 Of course, most smallholding peasants would not have had many animals, but many probably kept at least a few. Taxation records provide the best evidence of this, 94 Titow, English Rural Society, 79–93; Dyer, Standards of Living, 109–40; 95 Postan, ‘Village Livestock’. Kitsikopolous, ‘Standards of Living’. 96 Biddick with Bijleveld, ‘Agrarian Productivity’, 98–104; Page, ‘Technology of Medieval Sheep Farming’, 142–3. 97 Coleman, Downham-in-the-Isle, 60–1. At Wisbech, even the fugitive Adam Thornem had seventy-seven wethers among his chattels in 1332–3. 98 Stone, ‘Medieval Farm Management’, 618; Woolgar, Great Household, 112.

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although it would be a mistake to regard them as a comprehensive census, either of people or of their livestock. With regard to the latter, for example, the 1283 tax was assessed in the month of January, when livestock numbers were invariably low, and specifically excluded geese, capons, and hens, which were practically ubiquitous on peasant holdings.99 Poultry might appear unimportant in terms of manure, but the dung of hens and other fowls was considered to be among the most efficacious of dressings.100 More important than livestock numbers are livestock ratios; for even if peasants owned only a few animals, on a smallholding a little manure could go a long way. Indeed, peasant livestock ratios for the period before the Black Death do not compare unfavourably with those for demesne farms. At Cuxham thirteen unfree tenants had an average of approximately 32.4 livestock units per 100 sown acres. This figure is derived from the tax assessment of 1304, which appears to have underestimated numbers of livestock, but is nevertheless similar to the ratio of 36.5 units for English demesnes as a whole in the century before the Black Death.101 In fact, peasant stocking densities may often have exceeded this considerably: a sample of four peasant holdings from elsewhere in the country gives an average ratio of 58 units per 100 sown acres. For example, when the property of William le Maners of Walkern in Hertfordshire was seized by his lord in 1337, it included 63=4 acres sown with crops, one horse, one cow, one bullock, and twelve sheep; this gives a livestock ratio of 62.2 units per 100 sown acres.102 This is a very small sample, but such evidence should not be dismissed lightly, for the link between small farms and high stocking densities is well established for other periods.103 But it is not just the availability but the use of manure that is important, for, as we have seen, not all manure on a demesne farm was necessarily spread on the land, even in the decades preceding the Black Death. Subsistence farmers, on the other hand, were much more likely to have used all the manure that was available to them; 99

Powell (ed.), Suffolk Hundred, pp. x–xi; Stone, ‘Consumption and Supply’. Hill, Gardener’s Labyrinth, 41; Hall, Fertilizers and Manures, 203–4. Harvey, Medieval Oxfordshire Village, 42, 107–9, 130, 174–5; Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 178. 102 Bailey (ed.), English Manor, 234–5. The other examples come from Campbell, ‘Field Systems’, 237; Langdon, ‘City and Countryside’, 72; and Poos and Bonfield (eds.), Select Cases in Manorial Courts, 117. 103 Overton and Campbell, ‘Norfolk Livestock Farming’, 386–8. 100 101


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they would have done the muck-spreading themselves and, as neither manure nor land was abundant, this would have taken up less time than it would on a larger farm. Nor was the difference between demesne and peasant land simply a matter of animal manure. Although the task of collecting and spreading human excreta is unlikely to have quickened the heart of even the most dedicated farmer, there seems no reason to suspect a medieval prejudice against it. After all, at the turn of the fourteenth century, nightsoil was collected in Norwich and carted out to nearby demesne farms. But while very few demesnes could afford to do this, it was an option quite literally not to be sniffed at by smallholding peasants. Indeed, Arthur Young calculated that ‘if the farmer manages his necessary house in such a manner as to suffer nothing to run off from it . . . he may from a moderate family, every year manure from one to two acres of land’.104 This may not sound much, but for the 30–50 per cent of tenants in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries who held 5 acres or less, it was a very high proportion of their land.105 Judging by the occasions when the acreage sown with different crops was recorded, the proportion of land devoted to legumes on peasant holdings may also have been relatively high. As Figure 8.5 shows, all such examples that a search through the historiography could uncover are either equal to or higher than the average proportion of legumes cultivated on Norfolk demesnes.106 Indeed, in 1336 Roger son of Nicholas de Wodecote from Ashby-de-laZouche devoted 10 out of his 16 sown acres to peas: a massive 62.5 per cent. There were probably several reasons why legumes were sown in such abundance. In Roger’s case, the crop would doubtless have helped support his 42.5 livestock units per 100 sown acres, perhaps helping to counter a relative lack of natural fodder. But it also seems likely that Roger and his family consumed some of the peas themselves. Given that he had a total of 24 acres of land, of which 8 were fallow, Roger must have been operating within a three-field system. With 3 acres each of wheat and barley to add to his 10 acres of peas, the probable rotation would have been 3 acres 104

Woodward, ‘Essay on Manures’, 274. Hatcher and Bailey, Modelling the Middle Ages, 45. Even where the precise proportion of legumes sown cannot be calculated, there is nonetheless a sense that this was more a peasant than a demesne crop: Harvey, Medieval Oxfordshire Village, 130–1; Searle, Lordship and Community, 289–90. 105 106


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Percentage of sown area under legumes

75

50

Peasant farms Norfolk demesnes

25

0 1250 1275 1300 1325 1350 1375 1400 1425 1450

Fig. 8.5. The cultivation of legumes in medieval agriculture, 1250–1450. Sources: Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 240; id., ‘Agricultural Progress’, 40; Bailey (ed.), English Manor, 234; Langdon, ‘City and Countryside’, 72; Mate, ‘Agricultural Technology’, 267–9; Hilton, English Peasantry, 41–2; Dyer, ‘Warwickshire Farming’, 23; Dewindt (ed.), Liber Gersumarum, 184; Suffolk Record Office (Ipswich), HA 91/1 m. 61. I am grateful to Mark Bailey for this last reference.

of wheat and 5 of peas, 3 acres of barley and 5 of peas, 3 fallow. Under this rotation, some peas would have been ready for harvesting in late spring, thereby spreading the annual workload and providing food for his family at the time of year when supplies of other crops would have been running low. The extent to which Roger’s peas also helped with the yields of his wheat and barley would depend upon how the rotation was organized. One possibility was that barley always followed wheat and that peas always followed peas, which would have provided little benefit, except for the second crop of peas. But, assuming that he sowed the same amount of each crop each year, Roger might have followed a more complex rotation that would have boosted cereal yields greatly, as laid out in Table 8.2. Under this, two-thirds of each wheat crop would have been preceded by a year of fallow, two years of peas, and another fallow year, while the remaining third was preceded by a year of peas and a year of fallow. Barley would have been similarly


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Table 8.2. Hypothetical crop rotation on Roger son of Nicholas de Wodecote’s land in Ashby-de-la-Zouche in the early fourteenth century Year

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Acres of land in one field 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

w p f p b f p p f w p f w

w p f p b f p b f p p f w

w p f w p f p b f p p f w

p p f w p f p b f p b f p

p p f w p f w p f p b f p

p b f p p f w p f p b f p

p b f p p f w p f w p f p

p b f p b f p p f w p f p

Notes: w ¼ wheat, p ¼ peas, b ¼ barley, f ¼ fallow. Source: Langdon, ‘City and Countryside’, 72.

favoured, with the added advantage that it could directly follow a crop of legumes whenever it was sown. Hypothetical it may be, but this example demonstrates how a strict three-course system could be worked to a peasant’s advantage.107 Yet the factor which probably distinguished peasant from demesne cultivation above all was the application of labour. The difference is partly a matter of quality. Even though labour services were increasingly commuted for money by the turn of the fourteenth century, customary labour was still used extensively on some demesne farms. Customary labourers worked grudgingly and inefficiently, but it seems likely that even hired labour on demesne farms would have worked with less motivation than family labour on a peasant smallholding.108 More appreciable, however, would have 107

According to Watson, hemp—again probably more a peasant than a demesne crop—would also have helped, for ‘far from being an exhausting crop, . . . [it] is proved by experience to be an excellent preparation for a crop of wheat’: Watson, Historical Account, 423. 108 Stone, ‘Productivity of Hired and Customary Labour’; Dyer, ‘Output per Acre’, 114.

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been the sheer amount of labour lavished on most peasant farms. On many demesnes, labour inputs in yield-raising tasks were comparatively low, for it was not worthwhile financially to use more. The demesne at Hinderclay, with its heavy soils, remote location, and hence low inputs is a case in point, and it was not alone, for heavy clay soils ‘dominated many parts of lowland England’, and ‘low economic rent lay like a shadow across the land’.109 Even on the most advantageously situated demesne farms, the need for high cash returns would effectively have capped labour inputs. Peasants working their smallholdings had to make decisions as well, but for them decisions were a matter of life and death, and what must have mattered most to them was the maximization of family income. Although family labour was not technically free, since using it meant forgoing the opportunity of earning money elsewhere, paid work was not invariably to be found, and many early fourteenth-century peasants may often have chosen or been forced to spend more time working on their own land. And there was clearly a lot of labour available: even at Martham the ratio of labour to land on local tenant holdings was six times greater than it was on the demesne.110 Consequently, peasant agriculture may well have been characterized by the assiduous application of farmyard and household manure, thorough preparation of the seedbed, zealous weeding, and careful harvesting. In fact, while marling appears to have faded away on demesne farms during the early fourteenth century, there is evidence that many tenants continued to exploit this valuable resource. Indeed, in 1337 a court roll from Walsham-le-Willows notes that ‘Alexander de Walsham kept open two pits called Marlers, dug in the time of Alexander his father [the lord of High Hall manor, 1316–24], of which one is at Pynchonnes Welwes and the other at Strondesway.’ The implication of ‘kept open’ is that the son was no longer exploiting these pits as fully as his father had, yet the same cannot be said of the local tenants for the very next entry reveals that Henry of Saxmundham was fined ‘because he dug in the pit at Strondesway this year’.111 Given the unstinting use of labour and attentive fixing and recycling of nitrogen, land productivity on peasant smallholdings 109 Stone, ‘Medieval Farm Management’; Campbell, English Seigniorial Agri110 culture, 418, 426. Campbell, ‘Agricultural Progress’, 39. 111 Lock (ed.), Court Rolls of Walsham le Willows, 1303–50, 13, 213. For other examples, see Campbell, ‘Field Systems’, 169–70, and Bailey, Marginal Economy?, 88–9.


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before the Black Death may generally have exceeded the yields recorded on demesne farms.112 This, in fact, is what the rare pieces of evidence for peasant yields indicate. Reliable evidence can occasionally be found when, on a tenant’s death, their land and the crops growing on it temporarily reverted to the lord. For example, the Wisbech harvest of 1349 included crops of beans from two plots of peasant land: 8 acres that had belonged to Agnes Tuliet and Agnes Hennys, which produced 6 bushels per acre; and 10 acres that had been sown by Stephen Daglard, which produced 10.2 bushels per acre. These yields may not sound particularly impressive, but in the same year the harvest of beans on the demesne land was just 3.2 bushels per acre. Of course, the summer of the Black Death was by any measure exceptional, and the difference between peasant and demesne harvests that year may have been accentuated by difficulties finding harvest labourers. Yet evidence from a less tumultuous year nevertheless suggests that a significant difference in yield still existed. Following his death in February 1347, the 6 acres of wheat that Geoffrey Scut of Downham had sown were harvested by his lord. The demesne harvest of wheat that year was 8 bushels per acre, but Geoffrey’s land yielded 11 bushels per acre; his land, in other words, was 1.4 times as productive as the demesne land. In this case, the difference between demesne yields and those on a smallholding might in fact be underestimated. If Geoffrey had been alive, he may well have spent a considerable amount of time weeding his land; in the event, it seems unlikely that Geoffrey’s land would have received much attention of this kind at all, for the lord spent a mere 3s. 6d. weeding the 1433=4 acres of Downham crops that year. Moreover, Geoffrey was a relatively substantial tenant, with a holding of about 22 acres of arable land; a tenant with only a few acres would have had even greater incentive to work intensively on their land.113 Other evidence for peasant yields is more circumstantial, but it nonetheless points to a similar conclusion. A sense of how contemporaries perceived the quality of peasant land can be elicited from the way in which demesne officials chose to use tenant holdings that were temporarily in the hands of the lord. At Hinderclay, 112 Equally, labour productivity would probably have been relatively low on an intensively cultivated peasant smallholding but comparatively high on a cash-seeking demesne farm. 113 CUL, EDR D10/2/18; Coleman, Downham-in-the-Isle, 68–9.

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for example, the main cereals sown on peasant crofts in this situation during the 1320s were wheat and barley; rather than planting the hardier and least valuable cereals on this land, farm officials chose instead to put their most demanding and valuable cash crops on it, which suggests that they considered this land to be well tended and capable of producing high yields. Contemporary perceptions of yield also suggest that demesne yields may not be representative of medieval land productivity. For instance, the author of the anonymous Husbandry noted that ‘by rights’ farmers should expect yield ratios of four times seed for oats, five times seed for wheat, seven times for rye, and eight times for barley.114 Because few demesnes reached such levels, historians have concluded that these expectations were unrealistically high. But it is possible that the disparity instead arose because the author based his observations on peasant yields.115 The relative productivity of demesne and peasant land doubtless varied from one area of the country to another, but even at Martham there are hints that yields on peasant land were comparatively high. In 1288 Thomas Godknape bought 11=4 acres of land from John Cope and in return agreed to provide the latter with 2 quarters of barley a year until his death. Taking into account the size of the customary acre used at Martham, this equates to 101=4 bushels per statute acre; by comparison, the average yield of barley on the demesne there, net of seed, was 13 bushels per acre. Surely Thomas must have been confident that he could achieve a mean yield exceeding that on the Martham demesne, or the return for his troubles each year would have been at most a measly 23=4 bushels per acre.116 Indeed, if Thomas and other smallholders did get relatively high yields from their land, they would only have been conforming to the same pattern as their counterparts elsewhere, for small farms and high land productivity have gone hand in hand in, for example, fourteenth-century Flanders, nineteenth-century Russia, and nineteenth-century Peru.117 The level of yields on most peasant holdings was probably reduced after the Black Death, for as the amount of land per head 114

Oschinsky (ed.), Walter of Henley, 419. Indeed, demesne yields may have been institutionally low, since any grain deducted by threshers (as payment) or thereafter by reeves (illicitly) was not included in that year’s issue: Searle, Lordship and Community, 310, 317–19. 116 Campbell, ‘Field Systems’, 25, 76; id., ‘Land, Labour, Livestock’, 175. 117 Id., English Seigniorial Agriculture, 71; id., ‘Field Systems’, 82. 115


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increased and the threat of starvation melted away, so the level of labour inputs would have been lowered and labour productivity would have risen. Indeed, in regions where the intensity of demesne cultivation was generally low, peasant yields may well have fallen to a greater extent than those on the demesne. Even so, yields on peasant land may generally still have been the higher of the two. There were doubtless exceptions, such as the comparatively low yields in 1377 on the large holding of the fleeing Walter Shayl of Hampton Lucy, a Warwickshire village soon to be completely deserted.118 Yet, in 1382 a widow at Chippenham in Cambridgeshire was managing to produce a remarkably high barley yield of 231=2 bushels per acre.119 And peasant land was still regarded well by contemporaries, for at Wisbech peasant crofts in the lord’s hands were sown in 1371–2 with valuable winter-sown crops, while in 1413–14 demesne barley at Alciston in Sussex was sown ‘in the wist of John Colyn’.120 Indeed, one plausible explanation for the 10–15 per cent difference between Campbell’s estimate of the population of England in 1375 (21=4 –21=2 million), based on the amount of food the country could produce at the level of demesne yields, and most recent estimates derived from the poll tax returns of 1377 (21=2 –3 million) is that peasant yields were still significantly higher than those on demesne farms at this time.121 The corollary of this is that Campbell’s radically low estimate for the population of England in 1300 (4–41=4 million) is probably out by at least the same margin. In fact, a 13 per cent productivity advantage in favour of the peasantry using this method would give a population estimate of about 5 million, while a difference of 40 per cent would bump the estimate up to about 6 million, a range which sits much more comfortably with orthodox population estimates.122 In this respect, the significance of the finding that Geoffrey Scut’s land at Downham was approximately 1.4 times as productive as the demesne land there hardly needs spelling out.123 118

Hilton, English Peasantry, 201–2; Dyer, ‘Warwickshire Farming’, 29. Poos and Bonfield (eds.), Select Cases in Manorial Courts, 160; Farmer, ‘Prices and Wages, 1350–1500’, 503. By comparison, on the nearby demesne farm of Brandon in Suffolk, the mean yield of barley in the period 1365–95 (including tithe) was just 13.5 bushels per acre: Bailey, Marginal Economy?, 103. 120 Mate, ‘Farming Practice’, 274–5. 121 122 Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 391–6, 402–3. Ibid. 404. 123 Even if we assume that yields on half yardlands were 10 per cent higher than demesne yields, that yields on smaller holdings were 25 per cent higher, and take 119

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More importantly, high peasant yields at the turn of the fourteenth century would also help to explain how huge numbers of families could survive most years with fewer than 10 acres of land. Even so, it would be rash to break into a grin of unfettered optimism about peasant welfare in the run-up to the Black Death, for many peasants held extremely small parcels of land, if any at all. Nor, indeed, can the spectre of soil exhaustion be banished entirely. Demesne yields may not reflect declining soil fertility, but that does not mean that such a decline did not take place at all; after all, intensively cultivated plots of tenant land would have been more prone to suffer in this way and we know from the Nonarum Inquisitiones of 1341 that some land was abandoned because soils were thought to be exhausted.124

A Wider Picture Although many historians shudder at the mere thought of postmodernism, few would disagree with its fundamental premiss that words must be interpreted in context; indeed, this has long been integral to the historical method. Yet, while the potential for statistics to mislead is notorious, the interpretation of numbers is seldom treated with the same theoretical rigour. Thus, when historians calculate a crop yield, there is a tendency to regard it in isolation from the aims of the people that produced it, and to assume that this was the maximum that could have been achieved using contemporary technology in those environmental conditions. Likewise, rising yields are often automatically associated with an improvement in farming and falling yields with the reverse. But numbers and trends such as these require as much contextual interpretation as words. Declining yields are not necessarily indicative of a crisis, and may often have been a rational response to changing economic conditions. Rising yields do not necessarily reflect greater rationality or improving technology, and in certain circumstances may in fact reveal economic inefficiencies. Indeed, the same trend in yields over the same period can mean very different things in different peasant crop preferences and consumption patterns into account, then Campbell’s method produces a population estimate for 1300 of 5.46 million: Stone, ‘Consumption of Field Crops’. 124

Baker, ‘Evidence in the Nonarum Inquisitiones’.


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locations. Nor are generally low yields inevitably an indication of technological backwardness, or high yields a sign of progress and efficiency. And just as chronological trends or geographical variations in productivity need to be understood in context, so too do the yields of different types of producer: recorded yields, by definition, are a matter of documentary survival, and are not necessarily the highest yields that the technology of the age was capable of producing. In fact, the interpretation of pre-industrial yields is less a matter of assessing the availability of agricultural technology and more a question of establishing the incentives and circumstances of the people that farmed the land. Yield-raising techniques were used with discretion, and for farmers for whom the incentive was profit this meant using them only to the extent that it was financially worthwhile. This book has been concerned with demonstrating the implications of this point for our understanding of the medieval English economy, but this is not a subject that is bound by constraints of period or place. For instance, attempts to introduce intensive cultivation to India in the 1950s may sometimes have been unsuccessful, but in rejecting these techniques, local farmers were acting neither ignorantly nor irrationally; indeed, a report on one such trial in Madras revealed that ‘In irrigated crops generally the output is higher than in the unirrigated crop, but the higher output is usually secured with too high a rate of input with the result that the total cost remains uncovered.’125 Similarly, with respect to nineteenth-century England, Hunt and Pam concluded that ‘maximizing output was an indulgent strategy rather than an appropriate one, even in the high farming ‘‘golden age’’, and in the depression ‘‘high farming’’ became unsustainable’.126 In earlier centuries even the most well-known techniques for raising yields were used selectively. Maitland believed that ‘the demand for manure has played a large part in the history of the human race’, yet in seventeenth-century Newcastle a massive heap of dung, ignored and unused by local farmers, built up outside the walls of the castle.127 Elsewhere, manure was not necessarily used for agricultural purposes, as one piece of eighteenth-century doggerel 125

Boserup, Conditions of Agricultural Growth, 69. Hunt and Pam, ‘Managerial Failure?’, 263. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, 76; Woodward, ‘An Essay on Manures’, 269. 126 127

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graphically suggests: In Portland Isle, in fam’d Dorsetshire, The pigs shit soap and the cows shit fire.128

Perhaps a similar lack of incentive to spread extra manure on the land helps to explain why, after livestock densities doubled in seventeenth-century Norfolk, a significant increase in yields was delayed until the eighteenth.129 Yet, while the motivation to farm for profit remained the same from one period to the next, farmers’ actions were naturally shaped by the circumstances in which they operated, and these changed considerably over time. Indeed, such changes may well lie behind some of the apparently enigmatic agricultural developments of the century after 1650, not least the sudden increase in cereal yields in Hertfordshire during the late seventeenth century. Not only did this occur at a time of stagnant population and falling grain prices, but it was achieved through the systematic use of medieval labourintensive techniques such as fallow ploughing and the application of marl and manure. These were techniques that had been available for centuries, but which until then were simply not used to the same extent on documented farms in the county, even in the demographically pressured era at the turn of the seventeenth century.130 There are hints, however, that the structure and nature of marketing was rapidly evolving at this time and that the commercial forces acting on these farmers were changing significantly as a result. For example, the proportion of the national population living in towns rose considerably in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Meanwhile, the process of marketing was made easier and less costly by improvements in the transport infrastructure and the development of procedures such as sale by sample.131 In fact, the impact of commercialization is clearly indicated by the blossoming of regional specialization at this time, both in Hertfordshire and elsewhere.132 The geography and timing of rising yields is not 128

Woodward, ‘An Essay on Manures’, 270. Campbell and Overton, ‘New Perspective’, 70–1, 79, 83–4. 130 Glennie, ‘Continuity and Change, II’, 149–52, 161. This, of course, excludes the holdings of medieval peasants, who may have used these techniques extensively. 131 Wrigley, ‘Urban Growth’, 688; Chartres, ‘Marketing of Agricultural Produce’. 132 Glennie, ‘Continuity and Change, I’; Kussmaul, General View; Overton, Agricultural Revolution, 104–5. 129


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without significance either; yields first started to rise close to London; a bit later, similar increases occurred in East Anglia; and then later still in more distant Lincolnshire.133 Even so, it was probably not until the late eighteenth century that the level of medieval yields was significantly exceeded, for while demesne yields may have been surpassed during the seventeenth century, the higher yields that were plausibly achieved on medieval smallholdings are unlikely to have been bettered on commercial farms until later.134 Although the incentive for subsistence farmers to raise land productivity when the population of England exceeded 5 million at the turn of the fourteenth century and again in the mid-seventeenth century is plain, there was probably no comparable motivation for large farmers until commercial demand was boosted to an unprecedented extent by the momentous rise in population after 1750. Notably, though, these different incentives had different consequences. On a small farm, yields would have been raised by the lavish application of labour, but rising land productivity would inevitably have been accompanied by falling labour productivity. But by the late eighteenth century larger farms dominated the agrarian landscape, and for them the incentive to maintain labour productivity at a high level was as strong as the incentive now was to raise land productivity.135 It was presumably for this reason that the scythe was only widely adopted for harvesting wheat from about 1790, even though it had sometimes been used for that task 400 years earlier.136 Such developments do not indicate that farmers were becoming increasingly rational; instead, they simply reflect the crucial interplay between incentive and circumstance. Decision-making may not account for every twist and turn of agricultural change, but it is nevertheless of much more importance than hitherto acknowledged. In light of this, our views of the most commonly cited theories of technological development require some reassessment, for neither Malthus nor Boserup dealt 133

Overton and Campbell, ‘Productivity Change’, 40–2. For instance, the average gross yield of wheat on Norfolk demesnes in the period 1325–49 was 15.6 bushels per acre, a level which was exceeded in the early 17th century and again in the early 18th century. But if the mean yield on all land in early 14th-century Norfolk had been approximately 20 bushels per acre, this level would not have been exceeded until the late 18th century: Campbell and Overton, 135 Overton, Agricultural Revolution, 172–5. ‘New Perspective’, 70. 136 Collins, ‘Harvest Technology’. 134

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adequately with the concept of choice.137 On the one hand, the Malthusian assumption of static technology under population pressure is not inappropriate, for there was no transformation in technical knowledge in either the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries or the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In fact, there is considerable evidence that England did not escape the clutch of the Malthusian trap at these times. Yet, by the same token, the major constraints on agricultural advance in pre-industrial England were plainly not technological ones: land productivity on commercially oriented farms could have been higher in the early fourteenth century or the early seventeenth century if market demand had been higher or the wheels of commerce had turned more smoothly; ‘revolutionary’ technology was actually sometimes in use centuries before the period with which it is normally associated. Similarly, Boserup’s theory is clearly applicable in some circumstances, for agriculture intensified in response to rising population in some regions of medieval England, albeit through the use of more labour rather than changing technology. Yet high levels of population did not inevitably promote intensification: for instance, it did not prove profitable for medieval landlords in densely settled north Suffolk to adopt yield-raising techniques to any great extent; the intensification of agriculture in seventeenth-century Hertfordshire in fact occurred at a time of falling population. The shape and destiny of the economies of distant societies can sometimes appear to have been wrought by powerful forces outside the scope of human action, but closer inspection reveals that a series of conscious choices and decisions made by the people in these societies played a major role in determining trends and patterns of development. While outlook and attitudes have changed in many ways since the Middle Ages, in economic terms medieval decision-makers were not necessarily less rational than their modern counterparts.

137

Malthus, Essay on the Principle of Population; Boserup, Conditions of Agricultural Growth.

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THESES

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Index Abbot Samson, abbot of Bury St Edmunds 12 Admington, Warwickshire 251 agricultural revolution 231, 274–5 Alciston, Sussex 222, 271 ale 84, 91, 215, 227 Alresford, Hampshire 20 n Alvechurch, Worcestershire 201 Anglesey Abbey 48 Arundel, Thomas, bishop of Ely 22–3 Ashby-de-la-Zouche, Leicestershire 265–6 Astill, G. 206 Aston, T. H. 200 auditors 31, 84, 88, 115, 124, 144–5, 146 n, 182, 200 Bailey, M. 20, 255 n, 266 bailiffs 13, 32, 58, 105 n, 172, 201, 219–21, 223, 248 Balsham, Cambridgeshire 34 barley 11, 38, 131, 228, 265–7, 270 cropping strategy 190–1, 195, 202, 207–8, 207–11 disposal 207 prices 53–4, 122, 203, 220, 227–8 yields 233, 270, 271 n Barnwell Fair 34–5, 123 n Battle Abbey 84, 122, 218, 224 beadle 32 Beaudesert (Waldersey), Cambridgeshire 26, 27, 28, 30, 33, 50, 51, 74, 75, 85, 89 n, 114, 124, 172 Bentley, Hampshire 20 n bere 37, 59–60, 170, 173 acreage 37, 51–2, 90, 128 cropping strategy 52–4, 90–1, 92, 94, 129–30, 132–3, 163, 164–5 disposal 47, 49, 85, 126 gross financial returns 57, 58 n, 134

prices 51–2, 86, 108 seeding rates 131, 145 yields 38–9, 53, 55, 60–1, 113, 146, 174, 177 n Best, Henry 151 n Bircham, Norfolk 249 birds 259 capons 264 geese 202, 264 hens 238, 264 swans 28, 152 Bishop’s Clyst, Devon 159, 219, 223 Bishopstone, Wiltshire 198 Blackwell, Warwickshire 251 Blakeney, Norfolk 22 Bolton Priory 197–8, 199, 200, 201, 204, 211 Boserup, E. 275–6 Bourton-on-the-Hill, Gloucestershire 248 Bradenham, Lionel de 12 Brandon, P. 17, 259 Brandon, Suffolk 34, 156 n, 215, 271 n bread 22, 47, 53, 127, 162, 167 n, 215, 227, 255 Breckland 41 n, 83, 215, 255, 256 n Brenner, R. 7 brickmaking 23, 28 Bridbury, A. R. 19, 83 Brightwell, Berkshire 83, 233 Britnell, R. H. 7, 20, 224 Broughton, Huntingdonshire 45 Buckden, Huntingdonshire 122 Burgh, Elizabeth de 48 Burgh, Geoffrey de, bishop of Ely 26 Burwell, Cambridgeshire 27 Bury St Edmunds Abbey 3–4, 11, 12, 53, 191, 199 Cambridgeshire 27, 82 Campbell, B. M. S. 7, 11, 66 n, 204, 205–6, 233, 254, 271, 272 n

296

Index

Canterbury Cathedral Priory 14, 83, 122, 190–1, 193, 200, 204, 213, 243 n, 256 Cargoll, Cornwall 249 Carpenter, C. 109 n Catesbys 225 cattle 11, 28, 40, 50–1, 73, 113, 114, 150, 161 n, 162, 180–2, 193, 260, 263–4 dairying 34, 40, 50–1, 74, 160–1, 170, 177–8, 180–1, 200–1, 202 disease 180–1 disposal 51, 127 fodder 73, 108, 116, 178 n, 242 grazing 143, 175, 177–8 housing 34 mortality 72, 115 negligence 222 n prices 158 profits 181 reproduction 181–2 stall-feeding 178 working lives 150 Caxton, Cambridgeshire 27 Channing, F. A. 254 Chatteris, Cambridgeshire 34 Chaucer, Geoffrey 14 Checkendon, Oxfordshire 257–8 cheese prices 158 Cheriton, Hampshire 20 n Chippenham, Cambridgeshire 271 claviger 219 clod-breaking 240, 245 cloth industry 224, 227, 233 coal mining 233 Colne, Huntingdonshire 33, 160 n Combe Abbey 225 Cononley, Yorkshire 201 Cottenham, Cambridgeshire 29, 156 Coventry Priory 225 Crawley, Hampshire 20 n, 207–9, 243–4, 248, 253, 258 crops and cropping: complex crop rotations 138–9, 142–3, 147 n, 164–5, 172–5, 248–9 convertible husbandry 59, 136–8, 144, 177, 248–9 cropping systems 254–5, 260–1 pests and diseases 261

prices 46, 53–4, 83, 86–8, 107–8, 109, 120, 121–2, 158, 203, 235, 249 timing of sales 86–8, 191–2, 213–14, 217 yields 15–17, 19–20, 38–40, 45, 54, 58, 62, 111–12, 235, 243–5, 252–4, 260–1, 262, 270, 272–6 see also barley; bere; dredge; legumes; maslin; mixtill; oats; rye; wheat Crowland Abbey 29, 37 n, 41 n, 46, 50 n, 156 customary labour 32, 69, 70, 73, 82, 102–4, 109–11, 112, 113, 116, 121, 147–50, 155, 157–8, 166, 176, 216, 223, 237, 238, 240, 251–2, 267 accounting for 201, 237 n, 257 Cuxham, Oxfordshire 16, 33, 84, 191–4, 196, 202, 216–18, 222, 236–8, 240, 242, 257–8, 264 Darby, H. C. 149 Defoe, Daniel 42 demesne management, efficiency of 52–8, 60, 62–72, 79–80, 86–8, 90–5, 106–11, 120, 125–7, 128–34, 136, 140–6, 152, 155, 168, 179–80, 181, 190–8, 212–16, 253 growing efficiency 199–205, 210 declining efficiency 163–70, 172–5, 181–4, 216–22, 243, 253 spatial variation 205–12 Derby 27 Dereham, Norfolk 27 Devon 215, 233 Doddington, Cambridgeshire 23, 27 n, 33, 34, 51, 89 n, 160 n Downham, Cambridgeshire 23, 51, 79, 156, 238, 240, 241, 245, 257–8, 263, 269, 271 Downton, Wiltshire 83 drainage 103, 104, 149, 171, 172, 259 dredge 11, 91, 120, 170, 173 acreage 38, 52 n, 56 cropping strategy 92, 94–5, 129–30, 163, 164 n disposal 48, 86, 126 gross financial returns 57, 134

Index seeding rates 131 yields 38–9, 91, 146, 174, 238 Dry Drayton, Cambridgeshire 29 Dunstable Priory 12, 204 Durham Priory 122, 228 Dyer, C. 223 earth-spreading 71–2, 240 East Anglia 83, 209, 275 Easton Bavents, Suffolk 227–8 Ebony, Kent 239, 243 n Ecchinswell, Hampshire 20 n ecclesiastical vacancies 25, 40, 72, 74, 78–9, 263 Edward I 203–4 Edward III 72 Elm, Cambridgeshire 26, 27, 28 Coldham manor, Elm 28, 106 Elsworth, Cambridgeshire 248 Elvethall, Co. Durham 228–9 Ely, bishopric of 20, 24, 25, 26–7, 28, 33, 50, 63 n, 75, 79, 82 n, 85, 114, 122, 126, 143, 156, 216, 242 episcopal consumption 22–3, 28, 47–8, 51, 124 Ely, Cambridgeshire 23, 29, 33, 34, 42, 50, 51, 75, 88–9, 117, 120, 123 n Ely Cathedral 23 Ely, Priory of 26, 29, 32 n, 72, 198, 200 n enclosure 76–7, 171 n, 175, 177–8 engrossment 98, 171 Esher, Surrey 256 Essex 195 estate management 6–7, 11–14, 18–19, 20, 32, 46–7, 82–3, 122, 156–9, 199–201 councils 13–14, 32 n, 89 n, 170 demesne leasing 19, 20, 29, 30, 46, 122, 123–4, 156–9, 182, 185, 200–1, 216, 218, 219, 220, 222 n, 223, 224, 225, 227, 229, 263 small landlords 21, 156, 224–30 Evans, S. 18 fallow ploughing 70, 112, 147–8, 251, 274 family labour 227, 267 famine 45, 53 famuli 70 n, 85, 102 n, 103, 104–5, 119 n, 148, 176, 197, 222, 232, 240, 245, 251, 257, 258

297

Farmer, D. 108, 118, 207 Farmer, G. 149 Felbrigg, Norfolk 249 Feltwell, Norfolk 156 Fen Ditton, Cambridgeshire 23, 33, 85 fish 22, 28, 227 Fitton End, Cambridgeshire 27 Fitzherbert, Master 119, 181 Flanders 250, 270 flax 28 football 82 Fordham, John, bishop of Ely 170, 184 Fornham, Suffolk 121 France 204 furlong rejuvenation 242 Galloway, J. A. 83–4 Gamlingay, Cambridgeshire 201 Germany 250 Glemsford, Suffolk 156 n Gloucestershire 247 Gower, John 111, 223 granger 102 Grant, A. 206 Gras, E. C. 208 Gras, N. S. B. 208 Graveley, Cambridgeshire 248 Great Cressingham, Norfolk 156 Great Shelford, Cambridgeshire 32 n, 156 n, 242, 251 Great Waltham, Essex 45 Halesowen, Worcestershire 45 Hall, D. 18 Halstead, Essex 27 Halton, Yorkshire 257–8 Hambledon, Hampshire 20 n, 191–2, 195, 196, 207–9, 242, 244, 257–8 Hampshire 20 n, 251 n, 257 Hampton Lucy, Warwickshire 219, 249, 271 Hanbury, Worcestershire 201 Hanworth, Norfolk 208–10, 239 Hardwicke, Gloucestershire 222, 255 harrowing 73, 114, 148, 182 n, 240, 245 harvesting 103–4, 106, 108, 203, 221, 235, 251–2, 268 scything corn 249–50, 275 Harvey, B. 6, 222 n Hatcher, J. 20 hay 73, 103, 116, 118, 120, 143, 178, 183, 221

298

Index

hay (cont.) prices 221, 241 n, 248 hemp 28, 267 n Henry V 109 n Hertfordshire 274, 276 Hevingham Bishops, Norfolk 223 n Higham Ferrars, Northamptonshire 19, 20, 159 High Easter, Essex 45 Hinderclay, Suffolk 11, 41 n, 53–4, 62 n, 67, 191, 193, 195, 196, 197, 199, 201–2, 206, 208–10, 212, 213, 219–21, 222–3, 226, 232, 238–9, 240, 246, 248, 250, 257–8, 260–1, 268, 269–70 Hindolveston, Norfolk 156 Hindringham, Norfolk 156 Holborn, London 23, 33 Holywell, Huntingdonshire 121 home counties 248 Horrox, R. 81 horses 11, 22, 40, 51, 67 n, 73, 113, 149–50, 260, 264 carting 73, 114 disease 72, 182 fodder 47–8, 108, 116, 148 n, 182 n grazing 226 n mortality 115, 150 purchasing 114 reproduction 114, 150 working lives 149–50 Hotham, John de, bishop of Ely 47 Houghton, John 117 Hundred Years War 46, 191 n Hunt, E. H. 9, 195, 273 Hurdwick, Devon 216 Husbandry 115 n, 270 India 273 Ivinghoe, Buckinghamshire 33 n, 233 Kempsey, Worcestershire 201 Kent 17, 247, 249, 255, 256, 259–60 Kent, Nathaniel 259 Kershaw, I. 204, 211 Kildewick, Yorkshire 201 Kindleberger, C. P. 232 Kingston St Mary, Somerset 198 Kinsbourne, Hertfordshire 199, 214–15, 232–3, 251–2 Knighton, Henry 102

labour productivity 102–6, 110–11, 116, 120, 206, 222–3, 238 n, 250, 251, 267, 271, 275 Lakenheath, Suffolk 126 n, 215, 240–1 Lancashire 262 Lancaster, duchy of 19, 20, 159 Langdon, J. 7 Langenhoe, Essex 12 Langham, Simon de, bishop of Ely 31 n Langland, William 11, 222, 223 lawlessness 102, 105 n, 223 legumes 11, 15, 38, 85, 104, 240–2, 247–8, 250, 255–7, 261, 265–7 acreage 38, 56, 62, 63, 64, 101, 107, 108, 140–1, 146, 240–2, 248, 265–7 cropping strategy 63, 108, 140–1, 175, 240, 242, 247, 255–7 disposal 48, 86, 108, 125, 142, 183, 241–2, 248, 255–7 gross financial returns 57 human consumption 265–6 impact on crop yields 63–5, 241 rotations 62, 63–4, 107, 142, 146, 241–2, 265–7 vetch 15, 67 n, 202 yields 38–9, 62, 108, 146, 269 Leicestershire 251 n Letts, J. B. 246 Leveringon, Cambridgeshire 27, 28, 178 Lichfield, bishop of 199 Lighthorne, Warwickshire 122, 246 lime 239 Lincoln, bishop of 122 Lincolnshire 275 Lisle, John de, bishop of Ely’s steward 78–9 Lisle, Thomas de, bishop of Ely 31 n, 79 Littlebury, Essex 27 Little Ouse 29 Littleport, Cambridgeshire 22, 29 n, 32 n, 85 livestock farming: disease 46, 54 fodder 47–8, 85, 86, 116, 241–2, 248, 255–6, 265 numbers 192–4, 238, 263–4, 274

Index prices 46 sales 159 veterinary care 180–1, 182 see also cattle; horses; pigs; sheep Loder, Robert 8 London 22, 45, 215, 255, 275 Longbridge Deverill, Wiltshire 249 Longchamp, William, bishop of Ely 26 Loose, Kent 240 Louth Park Abbey 91 Luttrell Psalter 148 Lynn, Norfolk 27, 29, 34, 48, 85, 122–3, 212 McGibbon, E. 198 n Madras 273 Maitland, F. W. 273 Malham, Yorkshire 257–8 Malthus, Thomas 275–6 manorial account rolls 9–11, 14, 31 n, 82 n, 201, 225 see also Wisbech Barton manure 15, 19 n, 228, 238–9, 242, 246–7, 259, 261, 263–5, 268, 273–4 as fuel 247 n, 274 impact on yields 66–7, 113, 142–3, 177 muck-spreading 67–9, 103, 112–13, 146–7, 178–80, 238–9, 246–7, 264–5 pasturing 68–9, 106–7, 143–4, 177–8 March, Cambridgeshire 27 n marl 202, 226, 239, 243 n, 246, 257, 268, 274 Marley, Sussex 218–19 Martham, Norfolk 62 n, 121, 156, 241, 245, 246–7, 257–8, 268, 270 Marxist interpretation 7, 232 maslin 11, 215 Mate, M. 17, 204, 205 Maxstoke Priory 226 n Melksham, Wiltshire 27 merchant’s cut 89, 125, 162 Merevale Abbey 225 Merton College, Oxford 13, 199, 200, 201, 218 migration 27, 31, 121, 168, 224 Miller, E. 29, 32

299

mixtill 37–8, 59–60, 64, 162 acreage 38, 51, 89–90, 93, 127–8, 160 cropping strategy 52–4, 57–8, 90, 92–4, 128–30, 163, 164, 167–8 disposal 47–50, 84, 85, 125–6, 160 distribution in demesne fields 99–100, 139–40, 172–3 gross returns 57, 134, 167 prices 52–3, 54, 86, 90, 108 yields 38–40, 53, 55, 58 n, 62, 64–5, 66, 93, 101, 106, 111–12, 129, 139–40, 146, 167, 174, 253 Monkton Deverill, Wiltshire 249 Morton, John, bishop of Ely 25 Nene, River 29 n, 35, 48, 97 Nerlove, M. 132 n Newbury, Berkshire 233 Newcastle 273 Newdigate, John 8 Newton, Cambridgeshire 26, 27 Newton, Cheshire 226–7 nightsoil 239, 265 Nonarum Inquisitiones 272 Norfolk 16, 22, 66, 206, 215 n, 239, 244 n, 247, 249, 254, 255, 259–60, 265–6, 274, 275 n Norfolk, earl of 239 Northwold, Hugh de, bishop of Ely 26–7 North Sea 46 north-eastern England 158 Norwich 208–9, 240, 255, 257, 265 Norwich Cathedral Priory 127 n, 156, 211 Oakington, Cambridgeshire 29, 82, 156 oats 11, 26, 28, 32 n, 33, 173 n, 255 acreage 38, 52, 55–6, 219 cropping strategy 55–6, 91–2, 130–1, 133 n, 163–4, 165 n, 190, 197 disposal 28, 47–8, 55, 56, 125, 182 n, 183 gross returns 57 seeding rates 145 yields 38–9, 106, 111–12, 146, 244, 245 n

300

Index

Ogilvie, A. 149 Oglander, Sir John 21 Ouse 29 Outwell, Norfolk 29 n Overton, M. 8–9, 204 Oxford 200

106, 120, 154, 192, 205, 206, 212, 217, 219, 220–1, 227–8, 229 calculation 199–200, 201, 211, 226 Pulp Fiction 4

Packwood, Warwickshire 227 n Pam, S. J. 9, 195, 273 Paris, Matthew 27 Paston letters 228 peasant farming 21, 126, 179, 235, 246, 247, 262–72 agrarian techniques 263–8 yields 262, 268–72 peasants’ revolt 121, 222 peasant standards of living 81–2, 126, 162, 268 holding size 262–3, 265 peat 28 Peru 270 Peterborough Abbey 50 n Pidley, Huntingdonshire 160 n pigs 11, 28, 40, 51, 79, 150, 193–4 disease 72, 115 disposal 51, 85, 127, 201–2 drowning 115 fodder 11, 108, 142, 232, 255 housing 34, 106 n, 171 n mortality 72, 115–16, 182 prices 46, 193–4, 202, 232 reproduction 11, 115, 232 Pinvin, Worcestershire 201 plague 29–30, 81, 102, 108, 147, 154, 247, 251–2 impact on labour supply 102–5, 147, 251–3, 269 ploughing 73, 103, 104, 113, 114, 146, 148, 242, 251–2, 257–8, 261 Pollard, A. J. 17, 158 Pollard, S. 8, 205 population 15, 18, 27, 29–30, 45, 81, 121, 204, 262, 271, 272 n, 274–6 Portland Isle 274 Postan, M. M. 7, 15, 16, 39, 61, 69, 146, 177, 243 Prestwich, M. 204 price–wage ratio 235–7, 239, 243, 245, 253 profit 3–4, 6, 8, 12, 14, 19, 32, 80,

rabbits 214–15 Radbourne, Warwickshire 225 Raftis, J. A. 7, 46 Ramsey Abbey 26, 28, 46–7, 84, 122 Raunds, Northamptonshire 19, 20, 159 Reach Fair 34, 123 n reap reeve 32 receivers 32 reclamation 25, 26–7, 46 Redgrave, Suffolk 239, 260–1 reeds 27, 28 reeves 13–14, 31, 32–3, 58, 60, 61, 86–8, 105, 120, 155, 171–2, 223–4 assaulted 223 dismissed 77, 79, 134–6, 169–70, 224 exempted from office 105 n, 223–4 fined 77–9, 193–4, 198, 218 lazy 166 muddled 139 stressed 145, 223 turnover 105, 168–9, 219, 220 relative prices 52–4, 90, 129–30, 132, 163, 191, 207–10 rent collectors 224 Richard II 22 Rickinghall, Suffolk 252, 260–1 ridge and furrow 259–60 Rimpton, Somerset 62, 84, 178 n, 240, 241, 242, 245–6 Rothamsted experiments 261 Russia 270 Ryder, M. L. 119 rye 11, 215–16, 261 cropping strategy 216 prices 158

Quinton, Warwickshire 227 n

St Guthlac 27 St Mary’s Abbey, Winchester 200 salt 28–9 sand 257 Sandlings 255 Saperton, Sussex 239 Scotland 204

Index sea defences 25, 149, 171–2 Searle, E. 218 seaweed 257 sedge 27, 28 Sedgeford, Norfolk 244 n seed 71, 85, 242 seeding rates 28 n, 70, 71, 131, 145–6, 242, 258–60 Seneschaucy 14, 135 Sevenhampton, Wiltshire 258 Shakespeare, William 109 n sheep 11, 17, 28, 33, 40–1, 73–4, 79, 113–14, 156, 162, 182, 202, 214–15, 221, 235 n, 263–4 dairying 50, 76, 89, 118–19, 126, 150, 153 disease 17, 20, 77, 116, 117, 151, 153, 182 drowning 122, 144 n, 151 fleece weights 17–18, 20, 41–2, 74–5, 116–17, 151–3, 155, 182–3, 245 fodder 77, 108, 116–18, 142, 153, 183, 226, 230, 241 n grazing 76–7, 107 n, 115–18, 143, 171 n, 178 health of ewes 76–7, 118–19, 154, 183–4 housing 34, 76–7, 118, 143 lambing rates 20, 41, 75–7, 117–19, 150, 153–4, 155, 183–4 mortality 18, 72, 105, 106, 115–16, 122, 151, 154, 155, 182, 183–4, 196, 214, 223, 230 negligence 182, 228 prices 127, 158, 213 purchasing 114, 150–1, 153 sales of stock 126–7, 213, 221 self-sufficiency 114, 182 shepherds 105, 118, 119 n, 184, 223, 228 Shipdham, Norfolk 34 silver mining 233 Siston, Gloucestershire 239 Smith, Adam 205 smoke-blackened thatch 246 soil conditions 15–16, 26, 209–10, 244, 245 n, 254, 255, 257–8, 259–60, 261, 268

301

exhaustion 15, 19, 61–2, 69, 174, 177, 232, 235, 245, 272 fertility 60–1, 99–100, 111–12, 136, 142, 146 n, 177, 205, 238 Somerset 259 Somersham, Huntingdonshire 23, 33, 34, 51, 85, 156, 160 n Southampton 199, 207 south-west England 83 Staines, Middlesex 201, 256 Statute of Labourers 144, 213 Stephenson, M. J. 17, 41, 117, 152, 153 Stern, D. 189 stewards 13, 26–7, 32, 78–9, 200, 201, 219, 220 n, 221, 224 sub-stewards 32 n Stoneleigh, Warwickshire 247 stone gathering 240 Stone, Thomas 259 Stourbridge Fair 34, 123 n Suffolk 212, 255, 260, 262, 276 Sussex 17, 62 n, 247, 249, 259, 262 Sutton, Cambridgeshire 198 Tarentino, Q. 4 Taunton, Somerset 45, 239 Taverham, Norfolk 245 n, 249 Tavistock Abbey 216 Tawney, R. H. 8 taxation 46, 203–4, 240, 263–4 poll taxes 81, 85, 271 Terrington, Norfolk 26, 28, 30, 33, 37 n, 51, 106 Thames 152, 256 Thetford Priory 31 Thorncroft, Surrey 198, 201 Thornton, C. 178 n, 241 n Thorpe Abbotts, Norfolk 260 Tilney, Norfolk 27 Titow, J. Z. 15, 17, 39, 61 Tiverton, Devon 249 Todenham, Gloucestershire 248 Topsham, Devon 249 Tottenham, Middlesex 223–4 Trow-Smith, R. 75 Twyford, Hampshire 20 n, 242 n, 243–4, 258 Tydd, Cambridgeshire 29, 30, 126 Tyne 233 Upwell, Norfolk 22, 27, 35

302

Index

Vale of Berkshire 246 wages 70, 81–2, 102, 104, 107–8, 109–11, 119 n, 120, 121, 145, 158, 175–6, 203, 223, 235, 257, 258 Wales 83, 204 Walkern, Hertfordshire 264 Walpole, Norfolk 26, 27, 30, 51, 178 Walsham-le-Willows, Suffolk 218, 223, 268 Walsoken, Norfolk 26, 28, 29 Walter of Henley 242 Walton, Norfolk 26, 28, 30, 51, 108 n, 178 Warboys, Huntingdonshire 121 Ward, J. 48 n wardrober 32 Warwick, earl of 122 Warwickshire 8, 225, 227 n Wash 89, 212 water transport 23, 33–4, 35, 47 n, 48, 106, 255 Watson, W. 41, 267 n Waveney valley 260 weather and climate 16–18, 45–6, 56, 91–2, 101–2, 128 n, 146, 149, 159, 196, 222, 232, 233, 235, 236 n, 245, 247 n, 259 flooding 23, 26, 30 n, 56, 91, 95–6, 98 n, 102, 120, 122, 131, 133, 149, 171–2 weather crosses 4 winter 91, 151, 152 weeds and weeding 54, 70–1, 101, 109–12, 144–5, 146, 171, 178, 228, 231, 236–8, 243–4, 245–6, 251, 253, 257–8, 259, 261, 268, 269 impact on yields 71, 111–12, 238 Well Creek 29 n Welney, Norfolk 29 n Wenlok, Walter de, abbot of Westminster 13 West Farleigh, Kent 240 west midlands 248 Westminster Abbey 6–7, 13, 46, 122, 199, 201, 214, 255 Wetheringsett, Suffolk 34 Whatcote, Warwickshire 227 n wheat 11, 33, 37, 59–60, 64, 173, 228, 242, 256–7, 265–7, 270

acreage 37–8, 51, 89–90, 92–3, 127–8, 160, 170 cropping strategy 52, 54, 57, 90, 92–4, 128–30, 163, 165–6, 167–8, 191, 195, 202, 207–11 disposal 47–9, 84, 85, 124–6, 160, 201, 207 distribution in demesne fields 99–100, 139–40, 172–3 gross financial returns 56–7, 134, 167 prices 46, 52, 53–4, 63, 71, 86, 90, 108, 122, 124, 128 n, 158, 203, 220, 240 seeding rate 145 yields 38–40, 53, 55, 58 n, 62, 64–5, 66, 93, 101, 106, 111–12, 139–40, 146, 167, 174, 238, 243–4, 253, 269, 275 n Wheatley, Nottinghamshire 255–6 Whig interpretation of history 231 Wick, Worcestershire 201 Wield, Hampshire 20 n, 241, 258 Wiggenhall, Norfolk 29 Wilburton, Cambridgeshire 82 n, 156 wild animals 238 Wiltshire 225, 251 n, 257 Winchester 200, 207–8, 243, 257 Winchester, bishopric of 15, 17, 18, 19, 31, 33 n, 39, 41, 62, 83, 84, 122, 191, 200, 206–8, 223, 233, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 252, 256 n, 257, 258 n, 259 Wisbech 22, 25–6, 28, 29 Black Death 30 castle 23–4, 28, 32, 33, 78, 105 n market and fair 28, 30, 31, 48, 84, 157 Wisbech Barton 26, 29, 31–42 accounts 20–1, 31, 35 n, 170, 177 administration 31–3 buildings 34–5, 76–7, 106 n, 118, 143, 171 landing place 35 n, 48 leasing 30, 123 n, 156, 166, 170, 182, 184–6 overview of income 161–2, 163 soil 35–7, 111–12 survey 26, 27, 35 n turbary 96

Index Wisbech Barton (agrarian techniques): cleaning seed 71 ditching 103, 104, 149, 171, 172 fallow ploughing 70, 112, 147–8, 176, 235 harrowing 73, 114, 148, 182 n legume cultivation 62–5, 101, 107–8, 120, 140–2, 146, 175, 235, 240, 247 manuring 65–9, 101, 106–7, 112–13, 142–4, 146–7, 176–80, 235, 246–7 scything corn 250 seeding rates 71, 145–6 spreading earth 71–2 weeding 70–1, 101, 103, 109–12, 120, 144–5, 146, 176, 235, 258 Wisbech Barton (arable) 37–40 consumption 47–8, 124–5, 160 cropping strategies 49–50, 51–8, 89–95, 127–36, 163–70 cultivation costs 133 n, 166 income 85, 88, 124, 126, 161–2, 168 land values 123 marketing 47–50, 84, 124–6, 160 peasant crofts 271 performance of fields 61, 99, 138 n, 172–5 rotations 58–61, 95–100, 136–40, 170–5 value of flexibility 94–5, 166–8 yields 38–40, 62, 101, 106, 120, 122, 146, 253, 260 n Wisbech Barton (pastoral): disposal of produce 50–1, 88–9, 160–1 investment 79–80 livestock numbers 40–1, 66, 68, 72–4, 79, 101, 113–14, 146 n, 149–51, 177–9 organization of flock 50, 126, 127 n pasture 36–7, 68–9, 106–7, 115, 143–4, 171, 175, 177–8, 180–1

303

productivity 41–2, 74–7, 116–19, 120, 151–4 revenue 50–1, 85, 126, 160–2 stocking density 66, 113, 146 n, 177 Wisbech Barton (reeves) 32–4, 105, 106, 168–9 Robert Black 95–9, 133 Robert Case 169 John de Tydd 33, 34, 168 Stephen Deye 169–70 Martin Dousing 33, 132, 135, 139, 145, 169, 186 n Adam Dumpisday 79, 105 John Fayren 77–9 William Howlet 170 n Reginald Lowyn 170 n John Manning 170 John Mariot 33 Thomas Meyere 169, 170 John Nevo 132–3, 134–5, 138–9, 141, 144, 145 John Trowan (1352–3) 105 n John Trowan (1422–4) 169 William Waryn 132, 134–5, 145 John Worthen 170 Wisbech High Fen 26, 37, 69, 76, 106, 115, 118, 122, 143, 144 n, 151, 178 Wisbech St. Mary 29, 165 Wissey 29 wood 34–5, 76, 225, 227 wool: marketing 50, 89, 160, 183 prices 46, 75, 107 n, 117, 118, 122, 126–7, 152, 158, 162, 183, 193, 214–15, 220, 227–8, 241 n storage 117, 152, 183 Woolstone, Berkshire 224 Worcester, bishopric of 13, 46, 83, 122, 199, 201 Wrightson, K. 8, 204 York 47 n Yorkshire 228 Youatt, William 117, 151 Young, Arthur 265

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