tery of Lathe in Somerset
to William Pole of Combe, Edith his wife, and Thomas his son, for
their lives. With the land went 360 wethers. For the land they paid 16
quarters of best wheat, 'purelye thressyd and wynowed,' 22 quarters of
best barley, and were to carry 4 loads of wood and fatten one ox for
the prior yearly; the ox to be fattened in stall with the best hay,
the only way then known of fattening oxen. For the flock of wethers
they paid L6 yearly. The tenants were bound to keep hedges, ditches,
and gates in repair. Also they were bound by a 'writing obligatory' in
the sum of L100 to deliver up the wether flock whole and sound, 'not
rotten, banyd,[155] nor otherwise diseased.' The consequence of the
spread of leases was that the portion of the demesne lands which the
lords farmed themselves dwindled greatly, or it was turned from arable
into grass. Stock and land leases survived in some parts till the
beginning of the eighteenth century, when it was still the custom for
the landlord to stock the land and receive half the crop for
rent.[156] According to the _Domesday of S. Paul_, in the thirteenth
century, a survey of eighteen manors containing 24,000 acres showed
three-eighths of the land in demesne, the rest in the hands of the
tenants. In 1359 the lord of the principal manor at Hawsted held in
his own hand 572 acres of arable land, worth 4d. to 6d. an acre rent,
and 50 acres of meadow, worth 2s. an acre.[157] He had also pasture
for 24 cows, which was considered worth 36s. a year, and for 12 horses
and 12 oxen worth 48s. a year, with 40 acres of wood, estimated at 1s.
an acre. In 1387, however, the arable land had decreased to 320 acres,
but the stock had increased, and now numbered 4 cart horses, 6 stotts
or smaller horses, 10 oxen, 1 bull, 26 cows, 6 heifers, 6 calves, 92
wethers, 20 hoggerells or two-year-old sheep, 1 gander, 4 geese, 30
capons, 26 hens, and only one cock. The dairy of 26 cows was let out,
according to the custom of the time, for L8 a year; and we are told
that the oxen were fed on oats, and shod in the winter only.

But if the position of the lords was severely affected by the great
pestilence that of the villeins was also. The villein himself was
becoming a copyholder; in the thirteenth century the nature of his
holding had been written on the court roll, before long he was given a
copy of the roll, and by the fifteenth century he was a
copyholder.[158] There was, too, a new spirit abroad