This makes it difficult for us to construe the second great aberration
from the general rule that the number of the teamlands in a county will
slightly exceed the number of teams. In Derby and Nottingham apparent
'understocking' becomes the exception and 'overstocking' the rule. In
Derby there is a good deal of 'waste' where we have to reckon teamlands
but no teams, and yet on many pages the number of teams is the greater
(_C>B_). In Nottingham there seem to be on the average near 200 teams
where there are but 125 teamlands. In many columns of the Lincolnshire
survey, and therefore perhaps in some districts of that large and
variegated county, the teams have a majority, though, if we have not
blundered, they are beaten by the teamlands when the whole shire has
been surveyed. It is very possible that a similar phenomenon would have
been recorded in Essex and East Anglia if the inquiry in those counties
had taken the form that was usual elsewhere, for the teams seem to be
thick on the land. Now to interpret the steady excess of teams that we
see in Derby and Nottingham is not easy. We can hardly suppose that the
jurors are confessing that they habitually employ a superfluity of oxen.
Perhaps, however, we may infer that in this district a given area of
land will be ploughed by an unusually large number of teams, whereas in
Devon and Cornwall a given area will be ploughed, though intermittently,
by an unusually small number. In every way the contrast between Devon
and Cornwall on the one hand, Lincoln, Nottingham and Derby on the
other, is strongly marked. Of the quality of soils something should, no
doubt, be said which we are too ignorant to say. An acre would yield
more corn in Nottingham and Derby, to say nothing of Lincoln, than in
Devon and Cornwall, though the _valets_ that we find in the three Danish
shires are by no means so high as those that are displayed by some of
the southern counties. But if we ask how many households our average
teamland is supporting, then among all the counties that we have
examined Lincoln, Nottingham and Derby stand at the very top, while
Devon and Cornwall stand with the depopulated Stafford at the very
bottom of the list[1409]. Then, again, we see the contrasts between
village and _trev_, between Dane and Celt, between sokeman and slave.
Possibly Northampton, Derby and parts of Lincoln really are
'over-teamed': that is to say, were the land of these counties to come
to the hands of lords who held large and compact estates, the number of
plough-teams would be reduced. Where there is freedom there will be some
waste. The tenements split into fractions, and the owner of a small
piece must keep oxen enough to draw a plough or trust to the
friendliness and reciprocal needs of his neighbours. Manorialism has
this advantage: it can make the most of the ox. Another possible guess
is that the real carucates and bovates of this district (by which we
mean the units which locally bear these names and which are the units in
the proprietary or tenurial scheme) have few acres, fewer than would be
allowed by some equation which the royal commissioners for these
counties carry in their minds. Being assured (for example) that the
bovates in a certain village or hundred have few acres, they may be
allowing the jurors to count as three team-lands ('of imperial
measure') a space of arable that has been locally treated as four. So,
after all, the rule that normally each teamland should have its team and
that each team should till its teamland may be holding good in these
counties, though the proprietary and agrarian units have differed from
those that the commissioners treat as orthodox.
[Attempts to explain the excess of teams.]
One last guess is lawful after what we have seen in Leicestershire.
These Nottinghamshire folk may be telling how many teams there were in
King Edward's time and recording a large increase in the number of oxen
and therefore perhaps in the cultivated area. In this case, however, we
should expect to find the _valet_ greater than the _valuit_, while
really we find that a fall in value is normal throughout the shire.
[Digression to East Anglia.]
We must here say one parenthetical word about the account of East
Anglia. In one respect it differs from the account of any other
district[1410]. We are told of the various landholders that they hold so
many carucates or so many acres. Analogy would lead us to suppose that
this is a statement touching the amount of geld with which they are
charged. Though there is no statement parallel to the _Terra est b
carucis_ which we find in most parts of England, still there are some
other counties remote from East Anglia--Gloucester, Worcester,
Hereford--where no such statement is given to us. In other words, a
natural first guess would be that in Norfolk and Suffolk we are informed
about _A_ and not about _B_. But then, it is apparent that some
information about _A_ is being given to us by a quite different formula
such as we shall not meet outside East Anglia. We are told about a vill
that when the hundred pays 20_s._ for the geld this vill pays so many
pence--seven pence halfpenny, it may be, or eight pence three farthings.
This is the formula which prescribes how much geld the landholders of
the vill must pay and it says nothing of carucates or of acres. Now this
might make us think that the carucates and acres which are attributed to
the landholders are 'real' and not 'rateable' areas, and are to be put
on a level with the teamlands (_B_) rather than with the hides or
gelding carucates (_A_) of other counties. Nevertheless, on second
thoughts we may return to our first opinion. If these carucates are
equivalent to the teamlands of other counties, Norfolk and Suffolk not
only differ but differ very widely from the rest of England[1411]. In
Norfolk we make about 2,422 carucates and about 4,853 teams, and,
however wide of the mark these figures may be[1412], the fact that there
are upon an average about two teams to every carucate is apparent on
page after page of the record; often the ratio is yet higher. We have
seen a phenomenon of the same kind, though less pronounced, in
Nottingham; but then, if in Norfolk we proceed to divide the 'recorded
population' by the number of carucates, we shall get 11 as our quotient.
This is so very much higher than anything that we have seen elsewhere
that we are daunted by it; for, even though we recall the possibility
that a good many tenants in this free county are counted twice because
they hold under two lords, still this reflection will hardly enable us
to make the requisite allowance. To this it may be added that if we
divide the acreage of Norfolk by its carucates and treat the carucates
as teamlands, the quotient will place Norfolk among the counties in
which the smallest part of the total area was under the plough. Further,
it will be observed that the statement about the geldability of the
vills does not enable us to bring home any particular sum to any given
man. Be it granted that the sum due from a vill is fixed by the
proposition that it contributes thirteen pence to every pound levied
from the hundred, we have still to decide how much Ralph and how much
Roger, two landholders of the vill, must contribute; and our decision
will, we take it, be dictated by the statement that Ralph has one
carucate and Roger 60 acres. We fear therefore that here again we can
not penetrate through the rateable to the real[1413].
[The teamland no areal measure.]
About the 'land for one team' we can hardly get beyond vague guesswork,
and may seriously doubt whether the inquiry as to the number of possible
ploughs was interpreted in the same manner in all parts of the country.
Here it may have been regarded as a reference to the good old time of
King Edward, here to the local custom; there an attempt may have been
made to enforce some royal 'standard measure,' and there again men were
driven to speculate as to what might happen if a wilderness were once
more inhabited. But unless we are mistaken, the first step towards a
solution of the many problems that beset us is taken when we perceive
that the jurors have not been asked to state the areal extent of the
tilled or the tillable land.
[Eyton's theory.]
Far other, as is well known, was the doctrine of one whom all students
of Domesday revere. For Mr Eyton the teamland was precisely 120 of our
statute acres[1414]. The proof offered of this lies in a comparison of
the figures given by Domesday with the superficial content of modern
parishes. What seems to us to have been proved is that, if we start with
the proposed equation, we shall rarely be brought into violent collision
with ascertained facts, and that, when such a collision seems imminent,
it can almost always be prevented by the intervention of some plausible
hypothesis about shifted boundaries or neglected wastes. More than this
has not been done. Always at the end of his toil the candid investigator
admits that when he has added up all the figures that Domesday gives for
arable, meadow, wood and pasture, the land of the county is by no means
exhausted. Then the residue must be set down as 'unsurveyed' or
'unregistered' and guesses made as to its whereabouts[1415]. Then
further, this method involves theories about lineal and superficial
measurements which are, in our eyes, precarious.
[Domesday's lineal measure.]
One word about this point must be said, though we can not devote much
room to it. The content of various spaces, such as woods and pastures,
is often indicated by a reference to linear standards, leagues,
furlongs, perches, feet, and there seems to be little doubt that the
main equations which govern the system are these:
1 league = 12 furlongs or quarentines or acre-lengths
= 480 perches.
Now we read numerous statements which take the following form:--'It is
_x_ leagues (furlongs, perches) long and _y_ wide,' or, to take a
concrete example, 'The wood is 1 league long and 4 furlongs wide.' The
question arises whether we are justified in making this mean that here
is a wood whose superficial content is equal to that of a rectangular
parallelogram 480 statute perches long by 160 statute perches wide. We
are rash in imposing our perch of 16·5 feet on the whole England of the
eleventh century, even though we are to measure arable land. We are
rasher in using that perch for the measurement of woodland. But perhaps
we are rasher still in supposing that the Domesday jurors have true
superficial measurement in their minds[1416]. We strongly suspect that
they are thinking of shape as well as of size, and may be giving us the
extreme diameters of the wood or some diameters that they guess to be
near the mean. If a clergyman told us that his parish was 3 miles long
by 2 wide, we should not accuse him of falsehood or blunder if we
subsequently discovered that in shape it was approximately a
right-angled triangle and contained only some 3 superficial miles. And
now let us observe how rude these statements are. The Norfolk jurors are
in the habit of recording the length and the breadth of the vills.
Occasionally they profess to do this with extreme accuracy[1417].
However, we reckon that in about 100 out of 550 cases they say that the
vill is one league long by a half-league wide. This delightfully
symmetrical county therefore should have quite a hundred parishes, each
of which contains close upon 720 acres. Among the 800 parishes of
modern Norfolk there are not 70 whose size lies between 600 and 800
acres. We are not saying that time spent over these lineal measurements
is wasted, but an argument which gets to the size of the teamland by
postulating in the first place that our statute perch was commonly used
for all purposes throughout England, and in the second that these lineal
can be converted into superficial measurements by simple arithmetic, is
not very cogent and is apt to become circular, for the teamland contains
its 120 acres because that is the space left for it by parochial
boundaries when we have measured off the woods and pastures, and our
measurement of the woods and pastures is correct because it will leave
120 acres for every teamland.
[Measured teamlands.]
One more word about these lineal measurements. In Norfolk and Suffolk
the total area of the vills is indicated by them, and so it is in
Yorkshire also. Now, unless we err, it sometimes happens that if we
arithmetically deduce the total area from its recorded length and
breadth, and then subtract from that area the content of any measured
woods and pastures that there may be, we shall be left with too little
space to give each East Anglian carucate or each Yorkshire teamland 120
acres and with far too little to allow a similar area to each East
Anglian team. Try one experiment. At Shereford in Norfolk we have to
force at least one carucate on which there are two teams into a space
that is 3 furlongs in length by 3 in breadth[1418]. That means, if our
method be sound, that each team has at the utmost 45 acres to till. Try
we Yorkshire. There also we shall find entries which to all appearance
will not suffer us to give 120 acres to the teamland.
In Andrebi ... 9 carucates for geld; there may be 6 teams.... The
whole half a league long and half [a league] wide[1419].
In Hotone and Bileham ... a manor of 10 carucates for geld; there
may be 10 teams.... The whole 10 quarantines long and 8 wide[1420].
In Warlavesbi 6 carucates for geld; there may be 4 teams.... The
whole half a league long and half [a league] wide[1421].
It would seem then that in these cases the utmost limit for the teamland
is 60, 80, 90 acres. Then again, there are a few precious instances in
which lineal measures are used in order to indicate the size of a piece
of land the whole of which is arable. This occurs so rarely that we may
fairly expect something exceptional. The result is bewildering. At
Thetford we hear of land that is half a league long and half a league
wide: 'the whole of this land is arable and 4 teams can plough
it[1422].' Here then, but 90 acres are assigned to the teamland. We
journey to Yorkshire and first we will take an entry which suits the
Eytonian doctrine well enough. 'There are 13 carucates of land less one
bovate for geld; 8 teams can plough them.... Arable land 10 quarentines
long and equally broad[1423].' In this case we have 1000 acres to divide
among 8 teamlands, and this would make each teamland 125 acres:--we
could hardly expect a pleasanter quotient. But on the same page we have
an entry which tells of a manor with 60 carucates and 6 bovates for geld
and 35 teamlands where the 'arable land' is described as being '2
leagues long and 2 [leagues] wide[1424].' This gives nearly 165 acres to
the teamland. There are two Lincolnshire entries which, when treated in
a similar way, give 160[1425] and 225[1426] acres to the teamland. Then
there is a Staffordshire entry which gives no less than 360 acres to
each teamland, though it gives only 160 to each existing team[1427]. The
suspicion can not but cross our minds that as regards the amount of
land that had 8 oxen for its culture there may have been as wide a
difference between the various shires in the days of the Confessor as
there was in the days of Arthur Young; only, whereas in the eighteenth
century a little space ploughed by many oxen was a relic of barbarism,
it was in the eleventh an index of prosperity, freedom, a thick
population and a comparatively intense agriculture. But theories about
the facts of husbandry will not dispel the whole of the fog which
shrouds the Domesday teamland.
[Amount of ploughed land in England.]
That, if all England be taken as a whole, the average teamland of
Domesday Book would contain about 120 acres seems possible, and since we
ourselves are committed to the belief that the old traditional hide had
arable acres to this number, it may be advisable that we should examine
some districts of ancient England through the medium of the hypothesis
that Domesday's teamland has a long-hundred of our statute acres. In
Column 1. of the following table we place the result obtained if we
multiply a county's teamlands (or in the case of Sussex and Gloucester
the teams) by 120; and in the following columns we give the figures
which show the state of the county in 1895. In order to make a rough
comparison the easier, we give round figures and omit three noughts, so
that, for example, 371 stands for 371,000 acres[1428].
A A P M W T M
r r e o o o o
a a r u L o t d
b b m n a g d t a e
l l a t n r s i l r
e e n ( a d a o n
e 1 i z a n A
i ( n 8 n u i n c C
n 1 t 9 s n d ( r o
8 5 a e g 1 e u
1 9 P ) n d P 8 a n
0 5 a d ( l 9 g t
8 ) s f 1 a 5 e y
6 t H o 8 n )
u e r 9 t o
r a 5 a f
e t )
h
Total
Mountain Acreage
and Heath of
Permanent Land used Woods and Modern
Arable in Arable pastures for grazing Plantation County
1086 (1895) (1895) (1895) (1895) (1895)
1000 1000 1000 1000 1000 1000
Acres Acres Acres Acres Acres Acres
Sussex 371 298 381 9 124 933
Surrey 141 133 152 12 54 461
Berkshire 251 204 163 1 36 462
Dorset 280 188 300 18 38 632
Somerset 577 207 653 48 46 1042
Devon 957 581 633 138 86 1667
Buckingham 269 165 236 2 32 476
Oxford 317 228 188 1 27 485
Gloucester 589 269 387 7 58 797
Bedford 187 155 100 1 13 298
Northampton 352 215 344 0 28 640
Lincoln 605 1017 501 2 43 1695
[Decrease of arable.]
These figures are startling enough. We are required to believe that in
many counties, even in Sussex where the forest still filled a large
space, there were more acres ploughed T. R. W. than are ploughed T. R.
V., while in some cases the number has been reduced by one half during
the intervening centuries. Were the old acres in Oxfordshire as large as
our own, a good deal more than three-fifths of that county was ploughed.
Much might be said of the extreme futility of ancient agriculture. Then
we should have to remember the 'inclosures' of the sixteenth century;
also the movement which in our own day threatens to carry us back to
'the pastoral state[1429].' We should have to scrutinize those abundant
marks of the plough which occur in our meadows and on our hillsides,
even where we least expect them, and to distinguish those which were
being made in the days of the Norman conqueror from those which tell of
a much later age when 'the Corsican tyrant' threatened our shores.
[The food problem.]
And then there is the great food problem. At this point we might desire
the aid of a jury of scientific experts. We are, indeed, but ill
prepared to deliver a charge or to define a clear issue, but the main
question may be roughly stated thus:--South of Yorkshire and Cheshire we
have some 275,000 'recorded men,' some 75,000 recorded teams and (if we
allow 120 statute acres to every team) some 9,000,000 statute acres of
arable land[1430]. Is this supply of arable adequate or excessive for
the population? Unfortunately, however, the question involves more than
one unknown quantity.
[What was the population?]
In the first place, by what figure are we to multiply the number of
'recorded men' before we shall obtain the total population? Here we have
to remember that nothing is said by our record about some of the largest
towns and that the figures which we obtain from Norwich[1431] suggest
that the inhabitants of London, Winchester and the like should not be
neglected, even by those who are aiming at the rudest computation. Then
what we read of Bury St Edmunds[1432] suggests that around every great
abbey were clustered many artificers, servants and bedesmen who as a
general rule were not enumerated by the jurors. We must also remember
the monks, nuns and canons and the large households of barons and
prelates[1433]. Again, it is by no means unlikely that, despite a high
rate of mortality among children, the household of the ordinary villein
was upon an average larger than is the household of the modern cottager
or artizan, for the blood-bond was stronger than it is now-a-days.
Married brothers with their wives and children may not unfrequently have
dwelt in one house and may be described in our record as a single
_villanus_ because they hold an undivided inheritance. On the other
hand, we have seen reason to think that in the eastern villages many men
may be counted more than once[1434]. Shall we, for the sake of argument,
multiply the recorded men by 5? This would give us a population of
1,375,000 souls[1435].
[What was the field-system?]
What portion of the arable land shall we suppose to be sown in any one
year? Some grave doubts may occur to us before we put this portion
higher than one half[1436]. Common opinion would perhaps strike a
balance between two-field and three-field husbandry. So we will suppose
that out of 9 million acres 5 million are sown.
[What was the acre's yield?]
Then comes the insoluble question about the acre's yield. Even could we
state an average, this would not be very serviceable, for every district
had to feed itself in every year, and the statistics of the later
middle ages suggest that the difference between good and bad years was
very large, while the valuations of the manors in Domesday Book seem to
tell us that the difference between fertile and sterile, forward and
backward counties was much wider in the eleventh century than it is in
our own day. The scientific agriculturist of the thirteenth century
proposed to sow an acre with two bushels of wheat and regarded ten
bushels as the proper return[1437]. Walter of Henley proved by figures
that a three-fold return would not be remunerative, unless prices were
exceptionally good, but he evidently thought of this exiguous yield as a
possibility[1438], and yet, as we have seen, he represents the 'high
farming' of his time and in his two-course husbandry would plough the
land thrice over between every two crops. In the first half of the next
century we can not put the average as high as 8 bushels[1439]. To eyes
that look for 29 or 30, a yield of from 6 to 10 may seem pitiful; and
the 'miserable husbandry' that Arthur Young saw in the west of England
was producing from 15 to 20[1440]. However, there are countries in which
a crop of wheat which gave 10 of our bushels to one of our acres would
not be very small[1441]. For our present purpose, the figure that we
should wish to obtain would be, not that which expressed the yield of an
average year, but that which was the outcome of a bad year, for we have
to keep folk alive and they can not wait for the good times. Let us then
take our hypothesis from Walter of Henley. We suppose a yield of 6
bushels, 2 of which must be retained for seed. This would give us 20
million bushels as food, or, we will say, 15 bushels for every person.
[Of beer.]