large farming by the lords, and small
farming by the tenants. Nor must we compare it to an ordinary estate;
for it was a dominion within which the lord had authority over
subjects of various ranks; he was not only a proprietor but a prince
with courts of his own, the arbiter of his tenants' rights as well as
owner of the land.

One of the most striking features of the Domesday survey is the large
quantity of arable land and the small quantity of meadow, which
usually was the only land whence they obtained their hay, for the
common pasture cannot often have been mown.[53] Indeed, it is
difficult to understand how they fed their stock in hard winters.

According to the returns, in many counties more acres were ploughed in
1086 than to-day; in some twice as much. In Somerset in 1086 there
were 577,000 acres of arable; in 1907, 178,967. In Gloucestershire, in
1086, 589,000 acres; in 1907, 238,456.[54] These are extreme
instances; but the preponderance of arable is startling, even if we
allow for the recent conversion of arable to pasture on account of the
low price of corn. Between the eleventh century and the sixteenth, the
laying down of land to grass must have proceeded on a gigantic scale,
for Harrison tells us that in his day England was mainly a grazing
country. No wonder Harrison's contemporaries complained of the decay
of tillage.

Mediaeval prices and statistics are, it is well known, to be taken
with great caution; but we may assume that the normal annual value of
land under cultivation in 1086 was about 2d. an acre.[55] Land indeed,
apart from the stock upon it, was worth very little: in the tenth and
eleventh centuries it appears that the hide, normally of 120 acres,
was only worth L5 to buy, apparently with the stock upon it. In the
time of Athelstan a horse was worth 120d., an ox 30d., a cow 20d., a
sheep 5d., a hog 8d., a slave L1--so that a slave was worth 8
oxen[56]; and these prices do not seem to have advanced by the
Domesday period.

According to the Pipe Roll of 1156, wheat was 1s. 6d. a quarter; but
prices then depended entirely on seasons, and we do not know whether
that was good or bad. However, many years later, in 1243 it was only
2s. a quarter at Hawsted.[57] In dear years, nearly always the result
of wet seasons, it went up enormously; in 1024 the English Chronicle
tells us the acre seed of wheat, that is about 2 bushels, sold for
4s.,[58] 3 bushels of barley for 6s. and 4 bushels of oats f