Agr Hist Rev 51 (1)

Sheep husbandry played a vital role in late medieval English agriculture, but evidence from demesne farms reveals that it was blighted by falling fleece weights and rising mortality rates. These trends are currently thought to have been caused by a long term climatic shift towards colder winters. The essay argues that these trends, together with rising fertility rates on some manors, can be explained by changes in the way in which demesne flocks were managed after the Black Death, and that, rather than being thwarted by their environment, demesne officials were, in essence, responding rationally to worsening economic conditions.

The article offers a contribution to the debate about the causes and chronology of the emergence of large-scale commercial tenant farming in England. Evidence covering 44,000 acres in Romney Marsh, Kent, discloses a consolidation of landownership and the increasing dominance of large tenant farms during the century after the Restoration, but also demonstrates conclusively that these trends were unconnected, and that they were reversed during the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries when there was a revival of owner-occupation on the marsh. It is argued that tenant initiative and shifts in the level of consumer demand were the forces driving developments throughout the eighteenth century.