ABSTRACT
Larger households, an increasing demand for luxury goods, and the granting of annuities and fees to retainers, all point to a rise in the level of disposable income enjoyed by the peers of late fourteenthcentury England. On the other hand, income from arable was declining, and after the crash of the great Italian banks in the 1340s, closely followed by the dislocation caused by plague, there was probably a general contraction of credit facilities in Europe.1 How then was this greater disposable income obtained? In part it was simply a consequence of the increasing concentration of landed wealth in fewer hands-and hence both a cause and an effect of the general social developments of the time-but it was also open to landlords to take more positive steps to boost their incomes. One of these was to adapt their land to different types of farming.
