lowed up, and persons who did not wish to convert
any arable to pasture are found increasing their tilled land by
bringing grass land under cultivation. The movement cannot be
explained, therefore, merely on the basis of the husbandry statutes.
Nor is the law itself to be dismissed without further examination, for
in it we find the explicit statement that fresh land could be
substituted for that then under cultivation, because common-field land
was in many cases exhausted; it was therefore better to allow this to
be laid to grass while better land was cultivated in its place.[34]
Here then, is the simple explanation of the whole problem. The land
which was converted from arable to pasture was worn out; but there was
fresh land available for tillage, and some of this was brought under
cultivation.

No alternative explanation can be worked out on the basis of
hypothetical wage or price movements. The historian is indeed at
liberty to form his own theories as to the trend of prices in the
seventeenth century, for he is unhampered by the existence of known
records such as those for the sixteenth century; but it is impossible
to construct any theory of prices which will explain why the
conversion of arable land to pasture continued at a time when much
pasture land was being plowed up. It is necessary to choose a theory
of prices which will explain either the extension of tillage or the
extension of pasture; both cannot be explained by the same prices. If,
as some historians assume, the increase of population or some such
factor was causing a comparatively rapid increase in the price of
grain in this period, the continued conversion of arable to pasture
requires explanation. If, as Miss Leonard supposes, the contrary
assumption is true, and the products of arable land could be sold to
less advantage than those of pasture, then the cause of the conversion
of pasture to arable must be sought.

It is not only in the seventeenth century that this double conversion
movement took place. In the second half of the fourteenth century
pastures were being plowed up. At Holway, 1376-1377, three plots of
land which had been pasture were converted to arable.[35] In this
period much land was withdrawn from cultivation. The explanation
usually advanced by historians for the conversion of arable to pasture
at this time is that the scarcity of labor since the Black Death (a
quarter of a century before) made it impossible to cultivate the lan