Abstract
Abstract Historians of late medieval rural society and agriculture are conscious of the short-comings of their evidence, which invariably originates from the administrative documents produced for the management of great estates. The estates of the magnates so far studied accounted for only a fraction of the landed resources of the country, and in particular tended to lie in the more densely populated and highly developed parts of the Midlands and South of England. Also, because most of the magnates were forced, by the early 15th century, to lease out their demesnes, in response to declining revenues, the documents, particularly manorial accounts, record the receipt of the rents rather than the management of agricultural production.
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