I cannot make out that there was any one
in Rougham who farmed as much as two hundred acres all told. What we
now understand by tenant farmers were a class that had not yet come
into existence. Where a landlord was non-resident he farmed his
estate by a bailiff, and if any one wanted to give up an occupation
for a time he let it with all that it contained. Thus, when Alice the
divorced made up her mind in 1318 to go away from Rougham--perhaps on
a pilgrimage--perhaps to Rome--who knows?--she let her house and
land, and all that was upon it, live and dead stock, to her sister
Juliana for three years. The inventory included not only the sheep
and cattle, but the very hoes and pitchforks, and sacks; and
everything, to the minutest particular, was to be returned without
damage at the end of the term, or replaced by an equivalent. But this
lady, a lady of birth and some position, certainly did not have two
hundred acres under her hands, and would have been a very small
personage indeed, side by side with a dozen of our West Norfolk
farmers today. The difference between the labourer and the farmer
was, I think, less six hundred years ago than it is now. Men climbed
up the ladder by steps that were more gently graduated; there was no
great gulf fixed between the employer and the employed.
I can tell you nothing of the amusements of the people in those days.
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