[1401] As a wheat-grower Devon stands in our own day at the very bottom of the English counties. Its average yield per acre in 1885–95 was 21 bushels, while Cambridge’s was 32. Next above Devon stands Monmouth and then comes Cornwall.
[1402] Marshall, Review of Reports to Board of Agriculture from Southern Departments, 524: ‘The management of the land is uniform; here and there an exception will be found. The whole is convertible, sometimes into arable, and sometimes pasture. Arable is sown with wheat, barley, or oats, as long as it will bear any; and then grass for eight or ten years, until the land is recovered, and capable again of bearing corn.’ See also p. 531: the lands go back to the waste ‘in tenfold worse condition than [that wherein] they were in a state of nature.’ It is just in the country which is not a country of village communities that we find this ‘aration of the waste.’
[1403] Some parts of Worcestershire, for example, show a marked deficiency in oxen. On the lands of Osbern Fitz Richard (14 entries) there are about 102 teams, and there ‘could be’ 32 more. See D. B. i. 176 b. In some parts of Cheshire also there is a great deficiency.
[1404] D. B. i. 122 b: ‘Luduham ... Terra 15 car. vel 30 car.’ In the Exeter book (D. B. iv. 240) two conflicting estimates are recorded: ‘Luduam ... In ea sunt 3 hidae terrae et reddidit gildum pro 1 hida. hanc possunt arare 15 carrucae. hanc tenet Ricardus de Comite. in ea sunt 3 hidae terrae et reddidit gildum pro 1 hida. hanc possunt arare 30 carrucae. hanc tenet Ricardus de Comite.’
[1405] D. B. i. 246 b.
[1406] Often a Yorkshire entry touching a waste vill gives no B. Therefore in my Tables I have omitted the number of the Yorkshire teamlands, lest hasty inferences should be drawn from it. I believe it falls between 5000 and 6000. It is much smaller than A, much greater than C.
[1407] Be it remembered that these waste vills can not send deputations to meet the justices, and that the representatives of the wapentakes may never have seen some of those deserts of which they have to speak. ‘All of these vills,’ they say on one occasion (i. 301), ‘belong to Preston. In sixteen of them there are a few inhabitants; but how many we do not know. The rest are waste.’
[1409] Devon, 2·1; Cornwall, 2·2; Derby, 3·9; Nottingham, 4·4; Lincoln, 5·0. The figure for Stafford is about as low as that for Cornwall; but Stafford has been devastated. See Eyton, Staffordshire, 30. Kent and Surrey would stand high. Kent would perhaps stand as high as Derby. But Lincoln has no peer, unless it be Norfolk, Suffolk, or Essex. Our reason for not speaking of these last three counties will appear by and by.
[1410] An essay by Mr W. J. Corbett which I had the advantage of seeing some time ago, and which will I hope soon be in print, will throw much new light on this matter.