Page:VCH Suffolk 1.djvu/745

 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY The leases of date 1572 show a special care for the timber on the estate, the tenants being permitted to crop, and lop and shred only such trees as had been used to these processes, and none other ; they are allowed as they will or not to improve the ground by clearing it of bushes and briars, and they may break up and put in tillage any pasture ground except the wooded borders. The conditions as to clearing the ground of thorns gradually became more stringent, though a very large amount of ' terra et pastura dumosa et boscalis ' must have remained unimproved through many successive tenancies.*"* In these earlier leases it is noticeable that the condition of the tillage is that chiefly looked to. From 1593 "° onwards another clause is to be noted ; the breaking up of pasture for tillage is penalized more or less severely, sometimes with a money fine, sometimes with the forfeiture of the whole or some large part of the crop. Whenever the import of grain to foreign markets had raised corn to a high price, the farmer might have been tempted to break up pastures and to sacrifice the certain profits of grass for the precarious ones of tillage, which would probably cease when foreign demands grew less.*"* About 1620*" the clauses about the clearing of thorns and briars drop out as self-evident, now that the price of land is so high, and in their place appears a provision for manuring and improving its condition, ' the great cattle to be foddered in winter with hay on the pasture.' The leases show a distinct advance in conditions favourable to the liberty of action of the tenant ; a clause providing that the landlord might re-enter and re-possess upon twenty days' (later extended to forty days') default of pay- ment, only after a legal demand of the rent, first appears in Hawstead in Elizabeth's reign."' In a lease of 1682 the allowance of ' carte-boote and plough-boote ' to the tenant is made for the last time."' Reyce (1618) "" graphically describes the course of husbandry in the mid- Suffolk district, where ' in the heaviest grounds scarce six horses of good strength can furnish one plough ' ; and the husbandmen who ' in the latter end of March beginning to break up their lands to fallow, do never cease until by twy-fallowing, try-fallowing, compossing and sometimes four-fallowing, they have sown their rye, mislin and wheat, or else have laid up their land for barley which in March or April following they sow in those lands thus summer-tilled.' "^ He goes on to condemn the practice of the farmer who, being almost at the end of his lease, and ' having respect only for his own profit, taketh a second and a third crop.' "' As the custom of granting long leases extended itself, while the old methods of cultivation requiring frequent fallow years were still pursued, the clauses of the leases referring to the last few years of occupation were necessarily stringent ; the tenant is required to leave the arable land to pasture one whole year before the end of the lease, or in other cases to give his successor access to a stipulated quantity of the fallow in the ploughing season previous to the expiration of his own term."' '" Cullum, Hist. ofHawsted, 203. '"' Ibid. 204. "• Ibid. 205. '"Ibid. 210. '"Ibid. 215. '"Ibid. 216. "° Reyce, op. cit. 30. '" Ibid. '" Ibid. »» Cf. Lease of Lavenham HaU, 1637, Harl. MS. 98, fol. 42. I 665 84