Very few cattle were kept. No more were kept because there was no way of keeping them. In the fields wheat, rye, oats, barley and beans were raised, but no hay and no turnips. Field grasses and clover which could be introduced in the course of field crops were unknown. What hay they had came entirely from the permanent meadows, the low-lying land bordering the banks of streams. "Meadow grass," writes Dr. Simkhovitch, "could grow only in very definite places on low and moist land that followed as a rule the course of a stream. This gave the meadow a monopolistic value, which it lost after the introduction of grass and clover in the rotation of crops."[[42]] The number of cattle and sheep kept by the community was limited by the amount of forage available for winter feeding. Often no limitation upon the number pastured in summer in the common pastures was necessary other than that no man should exceed the number which he was able to keep during the winter. The meadow hay was supplemented by such poor fodder as straw and the loppings of trees, and the cattle were got through the winter with the smallest amount of forage which would keep them alive, but even with this economy it was impossible to keep a sufficient number.

The amount of stall manure produced in the winter was of course small, on account of the scant feed, and even the more plentiful manure of the summer months was the property of the lord, so that the villain holdings received practically no dung. The villains were required to send their cattle and sheep at night to a fold which was moved at frequent intervals over the demesne land, and their own land received ordinarily no dressing of manure excepting the scant amount produced when the village flocks pastured on the fallow fields.

The supply of manure, insufficient in any case to maintain the fertility of the arable land, was diminishing rather than increasing. As Dr. Russell suggested in the passage referred to above, the continuous use of pastures and meadows causes a deterioration in their quality. The quantity of fodder was decreasing for this reason, almost imperceptibly, but none the less seriously. Fewer cattle could be kept as the grass land deteriorated, and the small quantity of manure which was available for restoring the productivity of the open fields was gradually decreasing for this reason.

Soil exhaustion went on during the Middle Ages not because the cultivators were careless or ignorant of the fact that manure is needed to maintain fertility, but because this means of improving the soil was not within their reach. They used what manure they had and marled the soil when they had the time and could afford it, but, as the centuries passed, the virgin richness of the soil was exhausted and crops diminished.

The only crops which are a matter of statistical record are those raised on the demesne land of those manors managed for their owners by bailiffs who made reports of the number of acres sown and the size of the harvest. These crops were probably greater than those reaped from average land, as it is reasonable to suppose that the demesne land was superior to that held by villains in the first place, and as it received better care, having the benefit of the sheep fold and of such stall manure as could be collected. Even if it were possible to form an accurate estimate of the average yield of demesne land, then, we should have an over-estimate for the average yield of ordinary common-field land. No accurate estimate of the average yield even of demesne land can be made, however, on the basis of the few entries regarding the yield of land which have been printed. Variations in yield from season to season and from manor to manor in the same season are so great that nothing can be inferred as to the general average in any one season, nor as to the comparative productivity in different periods, from the materials at hand. For instance, at Downton, one of the Winchester manors, the average yield of wheat between 1346 and 1353 was 6.5 bushels per acre, but this average includes a yield of 3.5 bushels in 1347 and one of 14 bushels in 1352,[[43]] showing that no single year gives a fair indication of the average yield of the period. For the most part the data available apply to areas too small and to periods too brief to give more than the general impression that the yield of land was very low.

In the thirteenth century Walter of Henley and the writer of the anonymous Husbandry are authorities for the opinion that the average yield of wheat land should be about ten bushels per acre.[[44]] At Combe, Oxfordshire, about the middle of the century, the average yield during several seasons was only 5 bushels.[[45]] About 1300, the fifty acres of demesne planted with wheat at Forncett yielded about five-fold or 10 bushels an acre (five seasons).[[46]] Between 1330 and 1340, the average yield (500 acres for three seasons), at ten manors of the Merton College estates was also 10 bushels.[[47]] At Hawsted, where about 60 acres annually were sown with wheat, the average yield for three seasons at the end of the fourteenth century was a little more than 7½ bushels an acre.[[48]]

Statistical data so scattered as this cannot be used as the basis of an inquiry into the rate of soil exhaustion. Where the normal variation from place to place and from season to season is as great as it is in agriculture, the material from which averages are constructed must be unusually extensive. So far as I know, no material in this field entirely satisfactory for statistical purposes is accessible at the present time. There is, however, one manor, Witney, for which important data for as many as eighteen seasons between 1200 and 1400 have been printed. A second suggestive source of information is Gras's table of harvest statistics for the whole Winchester group of manors, covering three different seasons, separated from each other by intervals of about a century. The acreage reported for the Winchester manors is so extensive that the average yield of the group can be fairly taken to be the average for all of that part of England. Moreover, Witney seems to be representative of the Winchester group, if the fact that the yield at Witney is close to the group average in the years when this is known can be relied upon as an indication of its representativeness in the years when the group average is not known. The average yield for all the manors in 1208-1209 was 4⅓ bushels per acre; for Witney alone, 3⅔. In 1396-1397 the yield of the group and the yield at Witney are, respectively, 6 and 6¼ bushels per acre.[[49]]

[Table III] shows the yield of wheat on the manors of the Bishopric of Winchester in the years 1209, 1300 and 1397. If it could be shown that these were representative years, we should have a means of measuring the increase or decrease in productivity in these two centuries. Some indication of the representativeness of the years 1300 and 1397 is given by a comparison of prices for these years with the average prices of the period in which they lie. The price in 1300 was about 17 per cent below the average for the period 1291-1310,[[50]] an indication that the crop of nine bushels per acre reaped in 1299-1300 was above the normal. The price of wheat in 1397 was very slightly above the average for the period;[[51]] six bushels an acre or more, then, was probably a normal crop at the end of the fourteenth century. This conclusion is supported also by the fact that the yield in that year at Witney was approximately the same as the average of the eleven seasons between 1340 and 1354 noted in [Table V]. The price of wheat in the year 1209-1210 is not ascertainable. Walter of Henley's statement that the price of corn must be higher than the average to prevent loss when the return for seed sown was only three-fold[[52]] is an indication that the normal yield must have been at this time at least three-fold, or six bushels, so that the extremely low yield of the year 1208-1209 can hardly be considered typical. This examination of the yield in the three seasons shown in the table gives these results: at the beginning of the thirteenth century the average yield was probably about six bushels and certainly not more than ten; at the beginning of the fourteenth century the average was less than nine bushels—how much less, whether more or less than six bushels, is not known—at the end of the fourteenth century the yield was about six bushels.

TABLE III
Yield of Wheat on the Manors of the Bishopric of Winchester[[53]]

Area sownProduceRatio produce
DateAcresBushels per acreto seed
1208-120968384⅓2⅓
1299-130033539[[54]]4
1396-13972366½63