An Economic Explanation of English Agricultural Organization in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

Abstract

IN a recent article in this journal, Edward Miller focuses on the curiously paradoxical development of class structures in twelfthand thirteenthcentury England.2 Despite a rising population and an expanding money economy in both centuries, the growing separation between landlord and entrepreneurial classes reversed itself for the duration of the thirteenth century. In Miller's words, the twelfth-century demise of manors to lessees for fixed returns3 was followed by a century in which managed their estates as speculative enterprises geared to expanding markets . . .4 Prof. Miller views the lord's choice of occupations-landlord or farm entrepreneur-as determined by the expected profitability of farming and/or his to economic enterprise. After presenting the evidence, Miller concludes that twelfth-century farm profits were not exceptionally low or variable.5 Hence logical necessity leads him to argue that the thirteenth-century behaviour of the manorial lords might well have been rooted in the policies and attitudes of landlords rather than in the basic economic situation 6 This approach suffers from two major weaknesses. The first is that neither changes in the landlord's preferences nor twelfthand thirteenth-century farm profits are observable in available records.7 As a result, neither hypothesis can be refuted and thereby eliminated as a possible explanation of the landlord's behaviour. The second weakness is the failure to make clear the link between profits and demesne farming.8 Traditionally, economic historians have equated low farm profits with demesne leasing. However, if farm profits are in fact low for all producers, why should anyone wish to lease the demesne? A more relevant