78 THE PEASANT'S YEAR
were held on his land, and even that the dung in the streets of
the vill should be reserved for his own use.1
All this evidence clearly indicates that medieval farmers under-
stood quite well the need for constant manuring, and yet at the
same time it was very difficult for the peasant to accomplish this
on his own holding. When we recall the slender resources which
were at his command the reasons for his constant defeat are
obvious. First, as we have seen, the lord had the jus faldae.
Secondly we must bear in mind that the peasant could not keep
any large number of animals himself owing to the difficulty of
feeding them throughout the winter. He had great difficulty in
keeping the comparatively limited numbers he owned, and was
forced to feed them on what would now be considered very
scanty rations. The Amount of manure, therefore, he could hope
for from animals fed in this way was limited. The peasant was
caught: he had neither the number of animals, the unrestricted
use of them, nor adequate fodder to produce the quantity of
manure that soil, cultivated under the medieval cropping system,
required if it were not to lose its productive power. He did what
he could: he worked to get his land manured, and even at times
went to the great labour of carrying marl or lime and treating his
land with this, but it was an uphill task.
Indeed, some writers have gone so far as to declare that the
soil was becoming exhausted in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, and that the comparatively wretched crops which were
then produced were mainly occasioned by this. So far, however,
very little evidence of any value has been produced which would
suggest that the yield per acre was falling decade by decade, and
it is difficult to see on what grounds such a theory can be sup-
ported.2 Exhaustion would probably have shown itself much
earlier than this, for most of the common fields date back for
several centuries; and, again, the experiments at Rothamsted
seem to be strongly against the "exhaustion" theory. There for
nearly 100 years a plot has been sown with wheat and left with-
out manure. For the first 30 years the crop diminished rapidly,
but then seemed to reach a stationary condition, and has re-
1 Denton, op. cit. 152.
2 The case against the "exhaustion" theory has been best argued by
R. Lennard in the Econ. Journ.', March 1922, where the authorities for and
against this view are quoted and discussed.