DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22140#0364
343 INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL HIS TOR 1
were of disferent duration. I have found them as short as five
and as long as thirty years. But they were comparatively rare.
In early times, then, the system of double ownership was universal
and familiar. I know from these tenancies on lease that the
liabilities of a socager, or a serf were quite up to those which
were put on a tenant for a term, with this additional disadvantage,
that the permanent occupiers had to do all their own improve-
ments, while the landlord was expected to do all this and more
for his temporary tenant. The position, then, of a landlord to a
tenant on a'term|.was not so advantageous as that of a person
who cultivated his own estate with his own capital and to his own
profit, and hence landlord cultivation was so universal that the
exceptions to it are rare, and can be explained by very intelligible
reasons. From the king to the serf all cultivated land. Even
artisans and citizens were agriculturists, and the England of the
Middle Ages was a country in which half the soil was in the
hands of peasant occupiers, or agriculturists on a small scale.
Now I must at once admit that all records of this industry
have perished. I do not suppose that there exists a single
account of a socager's husbandry during the whole epoch of the
old agriculture. It is possible that such people did not keep
accounts, or at best kept them by tallies. If they did keep them
there was no motive for preserving them, as there was with the
lords, to whom they formed collateral and valuable evidence of
title. But though the accounts of the tenants are lost, those of
the lords and their bailisfs exist by thousands. I have examined
all that I could come across, and from them I have been able to
construct an exact description of English agriculture through the
Middle Ages. I know very much more of that agriculture, its
process, its prospects, and its profits, than I do of the agriculture
of England after the Reformation. But it is, as I have said, of the
lords alone. I know of only one description of peasant husbandry
during the whole of the period, and that is the picture which
Latimer gives of his father's homestead at the end of the fifteenth
century. But though I suspect the worthy bishop of having a
little exaggerated the subsequent fortunes of his father's successor,
I am ready to admit that he gives a precise picture of his youth-
ful experiences in the house of a moderate occupation by an
were of disferent duration. I have found them as short as five
and as long as thirty years. But they were comparatively rare.
In early times, then, the system of double ownership was universal
and familiar. I know from these tenancies on lease that the
liabilities of a socager, or a serf were quite up to those which
were put on a tenant for a term, with this additional disadvantage,
that the permanent occupiers had to do all their own improve-
ments, while the landlord was expected to do all this and more
for his temporary tenant. The position, then, of a landlord to a
tenant on a'term|.was not so advantageous as that of a person
who cultivated his own estate with his own capital and to his own
profit, and hence landlord cultivation was so universal that the
exceptions to it are rare, and can be explained by very intelligible
reasons. From the king to the serf all cultivated land. Even
artisans and citizens were agriculturists, and the England of the
Middle Ages was a country in which half the soil was in the
hands of peasant occupiers, or agriculturists on a small scale.
Now I must at once admit that all records of this industry
have perished. I do not suppose that there exists a single
account of a socager's husbandry during the whole epoch of the
old agriculture. It is possible that such people did not keep
accounts, or at best kept them by tallies. If they did keep them
there was no motive for preserving them, as there was with the
lords, to whom they formed collateral and valuable evidence of
title. But though the accounts of the tenants are lost, those of
the lords and their bailisfs exist by thousands. I have examined
all that I could come across, and from them I have been able to
construct an exact description of English agriculture through the
Middle Ages. I know very much more of that agriculture, its
process, its prospects, and its profits, than I do of the agriculture
of England after the Reformation. But it is, as I have said, of the
lords alone. I know of only one description of peasant husbandry
during the whole of the period, and that is the picture which
Latimer gives of his father's homestead at the end of the fifteenth
century. But though I suspect the worthy bishop of having a
little exaggerated the subsequent fortunes of his father's successor,
I am ready to admit that he gives a precise picture of his youth-
ful experiences in the house of a moderate occupation by an