or is this the only instance
of agricultural colonies. Charlemagne transplanted part of his conquered
Saxons into Flanders, a country at that time almost unpeopled; and at a
much later period, there was a remarkable reflux from the same country,
or rather from Holland to the coasts of the Baltic Sea. In the twelfth
century, great numbers of Dutch colonists settled along the whole line
between the Ems and the Vistula. They obtained grants of uncultivated
land on condition of fixed rents, and were governed by their own laws
under magistrates of their own election.[695]

There cannot be a more striking proof of the low condition of English
agriculture in the eleventh century, than is exhibited by Domesday Book.
Though almost all England had been partially cultivated, and we find
nearly the same manors, except in the north, which exist at present, yet
the value and extent of cultivated ground are inconceivably small. With
every allowance for the inaccuracies and partialities of those by whom
that famous survey was completed,[696] we are lost in amazement at the
constant recurrence of two or three carucates in demesne, with other
lands occupied by ten or a dozen villeins, valued altogether at forty
shillings, as the return of a manor, which now would yield a competent
income to a gentleman. If Domesday Book can he considered as even
approaching to accuracy in respect of these estimates, agriculture must
certainly have made a very material progress in the four succeeding
centuries. This however is rendered probable by other documents.
Ingulfus, abbot of Croyland under the Conqueror, supplies an early and
interesting evidence of improvement.[697] Richard de Rules, lord of
Deeping, he tells us, being fond of agriculture, obtained permission
from the abbey to inclose a large portion of marsh for the purpose of
separate pasture, excluding the Welland by a strong dike, upon which he
erected a town, and rendering those stagnant fens a garden of Eden.[698]
In imitation of this spirited cultivator, the inhabitants of Spalding
and some neighbouring villages by a common resolution divided their
marshes amongst them; when some converting them to tillage, some
reserving them for meadow, others leaving them in pasture, they found a
rich soil for every purpose. The abbey of Croyland and villages in that
neighbourhood followed this example.[699] This early instance of
parochial inclosure is not to be overlooked in the history of social
prog