English Agriculture and Estate Management Instructions, 1200–1700: From Orality to Textuality to Modern Instructions

Abstract

This article discusses the history and development of English agriculture and estate management instructions, 1200–1700, as these shifted from oral to textual forms. Beginning with manuscript treatises that influenced important instruction books printed in the 16th century, the article shows how major agricultural writers developed instructions for a range of users. By the close of the 17th century, agricultural and estate management books exemplified increasingly modern presentation and style.

Notes

1. In the next section, when I discuss the four medieval treatises, I will not discuss Husbandry (Grosseteste, 1260/1971) because it did not carry the influence of Seneschaucy (1253/1971) or Walter of Henley (1276/1971). However, Husbandry does show the importance of linear lists as mnemonics and directives.

Husbandry (Grosseteste, 1260/1971), the least organized of this early group of estate management instructions, suggests that the writer prepared the work, at least initially, to serve as a reference for himself or another on the estate to use when information was called for during the audit. Rather than an introduction, common to texts prepared for reading, Husbandry began with the oath taken by the accountant and the accountant's clerk before the audit began. The topics—instructions—that follow suggest the order of the audit and explain the requirements and the reasons.

At the point in the audit where the audit of the money account began, the compiler included linear lists, enumerating money sources to support memory so that no item was forgotten, to help the auditor when “hearing” the account:

37 One owes first for one's arrears if there are any.

And then for assized rents, farms of mills, dovecots, fairs, and markets, for profits derived from the lord's privileges concerning drink, ale, flax, and all kinds of common rights, for stallage, toll, wardsilver, and Peter's pence.

And then for pleas, for the issues of the manorial court, pledges, reliefs, escheats, marriage fines; for casual receipts from scutage, tallages, payments from heirs, leyrwite; for bargains, acres put out to rent, or for any other property if any rent has freshly accured, since the last account.

You ought also to hear audit concerning the fisheries in rivers in open country, in small steams, in ditches, marshes, or fish-ponds; and of all kinds of produce of gardens and curtilages; or herbage of the yard, orchards, and gardens and of herbage in forest wards and in smaller division, in woods and parks, low shrubberies and underwood; and of the agistment of stock and of rents from pastures and herbage sold in gross. And bee it known that he who renders account ought to name all the places which he keeps back for the grazing of the manorial stock—and their value—just as carefully as the grazing which he sells, so that the value of the manor may be more fully ascertained. (pp. 433–435)

2. I was an Andrew Mellon Fellow at The Huntington Library. I have looked at as many as a dozen printed versions of some of the books I cite. I refer to the first edition in the reference list and often cite from a later one because it is easier to read or perhaps the later version was revised, although the basic content remained unchanged. The estate manual documents all appear in Oschinsky (1971) because there are numerous, in fact several dozen manuscript versions of all of them, no dates on any of them, and we have to use a range of dates. Oschinsky is still the most recent editor.