§ 2. AGRICULTURE THE CHIEF OCCUPATION OF THE PEOPLE—Throughout the whole of this period the vast majority of the population were continuously engaged in agricultural pursuits, and this was rendered necessary owing to the very low rate of production consequent upon the primitive methods of agriculture. The production of corn was only about four, or sometimes eight, bushels per acre, and this naturally had the effect of keeping down the population, at this time still only between 1,500,000 and 2,000,000. It is a remarkable fact that even the inhabitants of the towns used at harvest-time to go out into the country to get agricultural work, and people often migrated from one district to another for the same purpose, just as Irish agricultural labourers of to-day are accustomed to cross over to England for the harvesting. {42} Some attention was being paid to sheep farming, and a noticeable increase in this branch of industry took place in the beginning of the fourteenth century. One order of monks in particular, the Cistercians, used to grow large quantities of wool; and indeed England had almost a monopoly in the wool trade with Flanders, for even Spanish wool could not be utilized without an admixture of English. But the great increase of sheep farming occurs rather later, at the beginning of the sixteenth century. § 3. METHODS OF CULTIVATION. THE CAPITALIST LANDLORD AND HIS BAILIFF. THE “STOCK AND LAND” LEASE—The agriculture of the early part of this period is described to us by Walter de Henley, who wrote a book on husbandry some time before 1250. It cannot be said that our agriculture was at this time at a high level, for, as we have seen, the production of wheat (_e.g._) was exceedingly low, not being more than four to eight bushels per acre. If we look at a typical manor, we shall find that the arable lands in it were divided pretty equally between the landlord and the tenants of the manor; and before the Great Plague the landlord was not merely a rent-receiving master, but a capitalist land-owner, who cultivated his land by means of his bailiff, subject to his personal supervision. These bailiffs kept very accurate accounts, and we are thereby greatly helped in our investigations in this period. The average rent paid by tenants from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century was sixpence per acre. In many cases, especially on lands owned by monasteries, the land was held on the “stock and land” lease system, by which the landlord let a certain quantity of stock with the land, for which the tenant, at the expiration of his lease, had to account either in money or kind. A relic of this kind of lease {43} existed even in the eighteenth century, for Arthur Young occasionally mentions the practice of the landlord letting cows to dairy farmers. In mediæval times the person to whom cows were leased for dairy purposes was the _deye_—_i.e._ dairyman or dairymaid. The stock and land lease plan