[194] Hist.  Reg.  Angl., p. 120.

[195] Gisborne, Agricultural Essays, pp. 186-9.

[196] Antiquities of Warwickshire 2nd ed., p. 51.

[197] Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century, p. 135.

[198] See Cunningham, Industry and Commerce, i. 331; Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century, p. 127.

[199] 7 Hen.  VIII, c. 1.

[200] Cunningham, Industry and Commerce, i. 489.

[201] Dissolution of small monasteries, 1536; of greater, 1539-40.

[202] Thorold Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices, iv. 129.

[203] Dugdale, Monasticon, v, 291.

[204] 24 Hen.  VIII, c. 10; 8 Eliz. c. 15; 14 Eliz. c. 11; 39 Eliz. c. 18.

CHAPTER VIII

FITZHERBERT.—­THE REGULATION OF HOURS AND WAGES

The farming of this period is portrayed for us by Fitzherbert, the first agricultural writer of any merit since Walter of Henley in the thirteenth century.  He was one of the Justices of Common Pleas, and had been a farmer for forty years before he wrote his books on husbandry, and on surveying in 1523, so that he knew what he was writing about; ’there is nothing touching husbandry contained in this book but I have had experience thereof and proved the same.’  In spite of the increase of grazing in his time he says the ’plough is the most necessarie instrument that an husbandman can occupy’, and describes those used in various counties; in Kent, for instance, ’they have some go with wheeles as they do in many other places’; but the plough of his time is apparently the same as that of Walter of Henley, and altered little till the seventeenth century.  The rudeness of it may be judged from the fact that in some places it only cost 10d. or 1s. though in other parts they were as much as 6s. or even 8s.  He says[205] it was too costly for a farmer to buy all his implements, wherefore it is necessary for him to learn to make them, as he had done in the Middle Ages before the era of ready-made implements, when he always bought the materials and put them together at home.  On the vexed question of whether to use horses or oxen for ploughing, he says it depends on the locality; for instance, oxen will plough in tough clay and upon hilly ground, whereas horses will stand still; but horses go faster than oxen on even ground and light ground, and are ‘quicke for carriages, but they be far more costly to keep in winter.’

According to him, oxen had no shoes as horses had.[206] Here is his description of a harrow:  it is ’made of six final peeces of timber called harow bulles, made either of ashe or oke; they be two yardes long, and as much as the small of a man’s leg; in every bulle are five sharpe peeces of iron called harow tyndes, set somewhat a slope forward.’  This harrow, drawn by oxen, was good to break the big clods, and then the horse harrow came after to break the smaller clods.  It differed slightly from the former, some having wooden tines.  For weeding corn the chief instrument ’is a pair of tongs made of wood, and in dry weather ye must have a weeding hoke with a socket set upon a staffe a yard long.’[207]