as changed considerably
since the days of William the Norman. The former were now free tenants,
who paid rent for their land to the lord of the manor, and were not
bound to work for him, while the latter worked for wages like our
modern agricultural labourer. There was thus in the twelfth century a
gradual approximation to modern conditions on many estates; the home
farm was worked by hired labourers who received wages; while the
villeins had bought themselves off from the obligation of doing
customary work by paying a quit-rent.

We should like to know something of the way in which our ancestors
farmed their land, and fortunately several bailiffs have left us
their account books very carefully kept, and one Walter de Henley
in 1250 wrote a book on the _Art of Husbandry_, which gives us much
information. The rent of land was about sixpence per acre. They
ploughed three times a year, in autumn, April, and at midsummer, and
used oxen for their plough-teams. Women helped their husbands in
ploughing and harvest work. An old writer describes the farmer's wife
"walking by him with a long goad, in a cutted cote cutted full high."
Pigs and poultry were numerous on a mediaeval farm, but sheep were the
source of the farmer's wealth. Large flocks of divers breeds roamed the
hills and vales of rural England, and their rich fleeces were sent to
Antwerp, Bruges, and Ghent for the manufacture of cloth by the Flemish
weavers. After the Black Death, a great plague which ravaged the
country in 1348, the labourers were fewer in number, and their wages
higher; hence the farmers paid increased attention to their sheep,
which yielded rich profits, and required few labourers to look after
them.

Prior to the advent of this grim visitor, the Great Plague, the
prosperity of our villages had greatly increased. The people were
better fed and better clothed than any of their neighbours on the
Continent. Moreover they were free men, and enjoyed their freedom.
There was much happiness in our English villages in those days, and
"Merry England" was not a misnomer. There were, however, two causes of
suffering which for a time produced untold wretchedness--two unwelcome
visitors who came very frequently and were much dreaded--famine and
pestilence. There is necessarily a sameness in the records of these
pestilences.

The chief famine years were 1315 and 1316, but there is hardly any
period of five years from the death of Edward I. to the coming of