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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 June 2009
The history of agricultural technique in the Middle Ages is a subject of obvious importance and interest, but in England, at least, it has never been systematically studied. It is true that the main outline of agricultural practice has been made familiar, as a result of the study of manorial documents, but there has been little attempt to investigate technical questions in detail, or to distinguish between the practice of different parts of the country. One branch of agrarian economy, sheep and cattle farming, has been almost entirely neglected, in spite of the fact that wool and hides were the staple export of England. Nor is it only the technique of farming which awaits investigation; the whole subject of estate management in the Middle Ages is almost untouched. Historians have in the main been content to study manorial organisation and those problems of tenure and of labour which can be observed in a manorial framework; it is the legal rather than the economic side of agrarian history which has chiefly interested them.
page 101 note 1 This Paper was read before the Society, at short notice, on the occasion of the Exhibition of a newly discovered MS. of “Walter of Henley” from a Register of Mottisfont priory (see a special article in the Times of 13 October, 1933) and the Discussion of the need for a new edition of the four Treatises contained in the edition published for the Society in 1890, an annotated copy of which, indicating some variants found in the Mottisfont register, was also exhibited on the above occasion (see below p. 112). The subject has been dealt with also by Dr. Hubert Hall in the Contemporary Review for May, 1934.
page 101 note 2 A beginning has, however, been made for sheep farming in two admirable articles, Page, F. M., “Bidentes Hoylandie,” a Mediæval Sheep Farm, Econ. Journ. (Econ. Hist. Suppl.) (1929), pp. 603–13Google Scholar, and Wretts-Smith, M., Organisation of Farming at Croyland Abbey, 1257–1321, Journ. of Econ. and Bus. Hist., IV (1931), pp. 168–92Google Scholar; the latter deals also with corn production. For cattle-farming, see the excellent account in Tupling, G. H., The Economic History of Rossendale (1927), ch. I.Google Scholar
page 103 note 1 All four were edited by Miss Elizabeth Lamond, with an introduction by W. Cunningham, under the auspices of the Royal Historical Society in 1890.
page 103 note 2 It was reprinted from the Paris edition of 1541 by Paul Lacroix in 1879.
page 104 note 1 Le Ménagier de Paris, ed. Pichon, Jérôme (2 vols., Soc. des Bibliophiles Français, Paris, 1846).Google Scholar English translation, The Goodman of Paris, translated with introduction and notes by Eileen Power (1928).
page 104 note 2 It has been edited by the Hon. Amherst, A. (Mrs. E. Cecil) under the title, “A Fifteenth-Century English Treatise on Gardening by Mayster Ion Gardener,” in Archœologia, LIV (1895), pp. 157–72.Google Scholar There are two other fifteenth-century English treatises on gardening, one entitled Godfrey upon Palladie de Agricultura and the other by Nicholas Bollarde, a monk of Westminster, but they are merely adaptations from Palladius, though that of Bollarde contains a few original elements. Palladius himself was translated into English about 1420 (see Palladius on Husbandrie, ed. Lodge, and Herrtage, , 2 vols., E.E.T.S., 1872-9).Google Scholar
page 107 note 1 I should like to take the opportunity of acknowledging my indebtedness throughout this paper to Dr. Hall's special knowledge of the subject and to his never-failing kindness in communicating it.
page 111 note 1 “Walter of Henley,” Trans. R. Hist. Soc., Vol. IX (1895), pp. 215–21.
page 113 note 1 Sir William Beveridge, Dr. A. G. Little, Dr. E. R. Lipson, Miss M. Wretts-Smith and Mr. Cripps-Day were unable to take part in the Discussion.
page 113 note 2 This report of Professor Gay's speech has not been revised by him owing to unavoidable delay.
page note 3 Transactions, N.S., XIV and XVIII.
page 115 note 1 Scriptum quoddam super dispositione domus et familiae [Gloucester Cartulary, Rolls Series, Vol. Ill, pp. 213–21.]
