THE HISTORY OF LANDHOLDING IN ENGLAND.

BY JOSEPH FISHER, F.R.H.S.




"Much food is in the tillage of the poor, but there is that is
destroyed for want of Judgment."--PROV. 13: 23.

"Of all arts, tillage or agriculture is doubtless the most useful
and necessary, as being the source whence the nation derives its
subsistence. The cultivation of the soil causes it to produce an
infinite increase. It forms the surest resource and the most solid
fund of riches and commerce for a nation that enjoys a happy
climate .... The cultivation of the soil deserves the attention of
the Government, not only on account of the invaluable advantages
that flow from it, but from its being an obligation imposed by
nature on mankind."--VATTEL.




INTRODUCTION.


This work is an expansion of a paper read at the meeting of the
Royal Historical Society in May, 1875, and will be published in the
volume of the Transactions of that body. But as it is an expensive
work, and only accessible to the Fellows of that Society, and as