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].
| Arable in 1086 | Arable (1895) | Permanent pastures (1895) | Mountain and Heath Land used for grazing (1895) | Woods and Plantation (1895) | Total Acreage of Modern County (1895) | |
| 1000 Acres | 1000 Acres | 1000 Acres | 1000 Acres | 1000 Acres | 1000 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?