[y] A good deal of information upon the former state of agriculture will be found in Cullum's History of Hawsted. Blomefield's Norfolk is in this respect among the most valuable of our local histories. Sir Frederic Eden, in the first part of his excellent work on the poor, has collected several interesting facts.
[z] 1. ii. c. 8.
[a] Cullum, p. 100, 220. Eden's State of Poor, &c. p. 48. Whitaker's Craven, p. 45, 336.
[] I infer this from a number of passages in Blomefield, Cullum, and other writers. Hearne says, that an acre was often called Solidata terræ; because the yearly rent of one on the best land was a shilling. Lib. Nig. Scacc. p. 31.
[c] Rot. Parl. vol. v. p. 275.
[d] A passage in Bishop Latimer's sermons, too often quoted to require repetition, shows that land was much underlet about the end of the fifteenth century. His father, he says, kept half a dozen husbandmen, and milked thirty cows, on a farm of three or four pounds a year. It is not surprising that he lived as plentifully as his son describes.
[e] Rymer, t. xii. p. 204.
[f] Velly and Villaret scarcely mention this subject; and Le Grand merely tells us that it was entirely neglected; but the details of such an art, even in its state of neglect, might be interesting.
[g] Muratori, Dissert. 21.
[h] Denina, 1. xi. c. 7.