On the Need for a New Edition of Walter of Henley

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Abstract
The history of agricultural technique in the Middle Ages is a subject of obvious importance and interest, but in England, at least, it has never been systematically studied. It is true that the main outline of agricultural practice has been made familiar, as a result of the study of manorial documents, but there has been little attempt to investigate technical questions in detail, or to distinguish between the practice of different parts of the country. One branch of agrarian economy, sheep and cattle farming, has been almost entirely neglected, in spite of the fact that wool and hides were the staple export of England. Nor is it only the technique of farming which awaits investigation; the whole subject of estate management in the Middle Ages is almost untouched. Historians have in the main been content to study manorial organisation and those problems of tenure and of labour which can be observed in a manorial framework; it is the legal rather than the economic side of agrarian history which has chiefly interested them.

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