Domesday Book and Beyond: Three Essays in the Early History of England

by Frederic William Maitland

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.

Now, had we to deal with modern wheat and modern mills, we might argue that the bushel of wheat would weigh 60 pounds, that the weight of flour would be 72 per cent. of the weight of grain[1442], and that every human mouth could thus be provided with a little more than 28 ounces of flour every day, or, to put it another way, with bread amounting to nine-sixteenths of a four pound loaf[1443]. Some large, but indefinable, deduction should be made from this amount on the score of poor grain and wasteful processes. As the sum stands, we are at present proposing to give to each person a great deal more wheat-flour than would be obtained if the total amount consumed now-a-days in the United Kingdom were divided by the number of its inhabitants[1444]. But it need hardly be said that the problem is far more complex than are our figures. In the first place, we have to withdraw from the men of 1086 a large quantity, perhaps more than a half, of the wheat-flour that we have given them in order to supply its place with other cereals[1445], in particular with barley and oats, much of which, together with some of the wheat[1446], will be consumed in the form of beer. And who shall fathom that ocean? Multum biberunt de cerevisia Anglicana, as the pope said. Their choice lay for the more part between beer and water. In the twelfth century the corn-rents paid to the bishop of Durham often comprised malt, wheat and oats in equal quantities[1447]. In the next century the economy of the canons of S^t. Paul’s was so arranged that for every 30 quarters of wheat that went to make bread, 7 quarters of wheat, 7 of barley and 32 of oats went to make beer[1448]. The weekly allowance of every canon included 30 gallons[1449]. In one year their brewery seems to have produced 67,814 gallons from 175 quarters of wheat, a like quantity of barley and 708 quarters of oats[1450]. With such figures before us, it becomes a serious question whether we can devote less than a third of the sown land to the provision of drink. The monk, who would have growled if he got less than a gallon a day, would, we may suppose, consume in the course of a year 20 bushels of barley or an equivalent amount of other grain: in other words, the produce, when seed-corn is deducted, of from two to three acres of land; and perhaps to every mouth in England we must give half a gallon daily[1451].

The Englishman’s diet.

But if we can not make teetotallers of our ancestors (and in very truth we can not) neither may we convert them to vegetarianism. What we can read of the provender-rents paid in the days before the Conquest suggests that those who were well-to-do, including the monks, consumed a great deal of mutton, pork, poultry, fish, eels, cheese and honey[1452]. This would relieve the arable of part of the pressure that it would otherwise have borne, for, though we already hear of two manors which between them supply 6000 dog-loaves for the king’s hounds[1453], and also read of pigs that are fattened with corn[1454], it is not very probable that any beasts, save those that laboured, got much from the arable, except the straw, and the stubble which we may suspect of having been abundantly mixed with grass and weeds. It is likely, however, that the oxen which were engaged in ploughing were fed at times with oats. Walter of Henley would keep his plough-beasts at the manger for five-and-twenty weeks in the year and would during that time give 70 bushels of oats to every eight of them[1455]. At this rate our 75,000 teams would require 5,250,000 bushels of oats, and on this score we might have to deduct some 4 million bushels of wheat[1456] from our 20 millions and reduce by one-fifth each person’s allowance of grain. But then, it is by no means certain that we ought to transplant Walter’s practices into the eleventh century; we have seen that he expected much of his oxen[1457].

Is the arable super-abundant?

At first sight it may seem incredible that the average human being annually required the produce of nearly seven acres. But observe how rapidly the area will disappear. We deduct a half for the idle shift; a third of the remainder we set apart as beer-land. We have not much more than two acres remaining, and may yet have to feed oxen and horses. But suppose that we concede to every human mouth the wheat of two full acres; we can not say for certain that we are giving it a quarter of grain, even though we suppose each acre to yield more than was to be had always and everywhere in the fourteenth century[1458].

Amount of pasturage.