[186]. Ibid. No. 633.
[187]. According to Pliny, the jugerum was a day’s work for a yoke of oxen, i.e. nearly an acre; but the Saxon jugerum can hardly have been so large, for the reasons given in the text.
[188]. Cod. Dipl. No. 1222.
[189]. Hist. Eccl. ii. 9; iii. 4.
[190]. Anon. Abb. Gyrw. § 33. This at forty actual acres, is ten acres per man.
[191]. We need not enter upon the question whether such a plot of land can be well cultivated (except as a garden), or whether it is desirable that there should be such a class of cultivators. All I assert is, that a man can support his family upon it.
[192]. The fertility of England was always celebrated, and under the Romans it exported cereals largely. See Gibbon’s calculation of an export under Julian. Dec. F. cap. xix. Our present average yield of wheat exceeds 30 bushels or 3·75 qrs.
[193]. If he had a market for his surplus, he might accumulate wealth. Even if he had not this, he insured a comfortable, though rude subsistence, for his household. The spur to exertion, urging him to acquire luxuries, might be wanting, and the national advancement in refinement thus retarded: but he had a sufficiency of the necessaries of life, and an independent existence in the body of the family and the Mark. Such a state necessarily precedes the more cultivated stages of society.
οἶκον μὲν πρώτιστα, γυναῖκα τε, βοῦν τ’ ἀροτῆρα.