farmers just at the time when it was likely to have fullest effect. The feudal system, and the cast-iron method of agriculture by which it was accompanied, had already begun to break down. The village, with its three fields and its threecourse rotation of wheat the first year; beans, peas, or other grain the second; and fallow the third, still prevailed, but rents were now usually paid in money instead of in service and kind. Landowners had become business men rather than feudal chiefs, and, in consequence, much of the land that had formerly been forest and waste was parcelled out in large blocks to be farmed by the landowners themselves or rented to farmers. Fields were enclosed both for tillage and grazing, and the economy of this system over the old "mingle-mangle" of the village system, both as regards crops and stock, was soon realised. Formerly, no man could adopt new crops or a new rotation, because his fellow-villagers and the three-field system were both against it; formerly, no man could improve his stock unless the rest of the villagers did the same, because the male breeding animals were used in common, and the female stock must all be grazed together. Now the "champaign" farmer could grow the crops that brought most profit, adopt an independent rotation, and select and improve his live stock as he had a mind.
Thus, many British farmers were free to take
