Note 188 — Chapter II · THE PEASANTRY

Thorold Rogers (Agriculture and Prices, vol. i. p. 34: “Not much less land was regularly under the plough than at present”) thinks otherwise. But (i.) modern agriculture has many ways of using land besides keeping it “under the plough”; (ii.) we know that in the eighteenth century large tracts now cultivated were barren heaths, and it is difficult to believe that these had been cultivated in the Middle Ages.