Early Vetches in Medieval England

T he leguminous annals of English agrarian history have been thrown into confusion by a recent claim that the earliest known reference to the growing of vetches as a field crop in England comes from Kent in I268, allegedly some ten years earlier than on the other side of the Channel.' That claim is now trumped by evidence for vetches at Ospringe in Kent in I238, so that 'it would appear that vetches may have been grown in Kent for many years before being introduced into the other English counties in the early I4th century'.2 A glance at a few standard printed sources, rather than a reliance on obscure secondary studies and unpublished MSS, would have sufficed to dispose both of the Kentish theory and the mistake which generated it. The evidence from Kent, and particularly from Ospringe, can certainly be taken back further. Vetch seed to sow at Ospringe was bought in I206-7, implying that the crop was grown elsewhere in Kent then.3 In 1225 seven 'sums' of peas and vetches were bought and sown at Kemsing (Kent), and in I232-3 as many as 362 quarters of vetches were harvested at Ospringe.4 Furthermore, vetches were grown as a field crop in Roman Britain, among other places at Downton (Wiltshire),' where they were again being harvested on the bishop of Winchester's demesne in I208.6 Four other Winchester manors, Waltham, Fareham, Bishop's Stoke, and Alresford (all Hampshire) grew small quantities of vetches in the same year,7 although it seems that only at Fareham were they still cultivated in I2I0.8 That does not imply an abandonment of vetches on the bishop's estate. At Harwell (Oxfordshire, formerly Berkshire), for example, another Winchester manor, vetch seed to sow an acre was bought in I2i8-9,9 and some of the produce was again sown the following year.'0 Clearly vetches were already grown on other estates in the Oxford region. In I225 over I3 quarters were harvested at Harwell, almost as much as on all the five demesnes where vetches occurred in I208. From I23I-2, when I7 acres ut

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