At the Doomesday survey in 1086, only about 5.9m acres was under arable cultivation, less than a quarter of the possible total. Some areas were as closely settled as practical – Flegg district in east Norfolk had the same population as it would in 1801. But there was plenty of space for the 12th and 13th century expansions, as the population (to 1315) doubled at least, while the craft and urban sectors also increased demand. The arable area had reached from 10m acres (it was 10.5m in 1800) and some of the areas under the plough then — parts of Dartmoor, the sandy East Anglian Breckland, and the heaviest midland clays – would not be ploughed again.
The number of draught horses was perhaps 400,000, and 800,000 owen (162,000 and 650,000 in 1086 respectively). This meant the rinderpest epidemic of 1319 was particularly destructive.
But only about a half to two-thirds was actually ploughed each year – the rest was fallow to allow recovery of the nitrogen balance.
As a counterweight to the theory of the “tragedy of the commons” theory, actually these were run by rules developed in the common interest, and were stable over centuries. “This, after all, was the social world from which sprang the team sport of football.”
Woodland was subject to intensive management – coppiced in the areas of most demand. “This was especially the case in the counties of the south-east, where a strong local demand for wood was reinforced by the more powerful regional demand of London, and, in the case of Kent and Sussex, by demand from the thricing coastal towns and cities of northern France and Flanders.”
“Little of the land of England served no agricultural purpose whatever. Wastes, moors and heaths supplied feed to sheep and free-ranging cattle, and during the 13th-century the development of commercial rabbit warrens turned the most barren sands into gold.”
But in 1315 came the bust – the start of the Great European Famine of 1315-1321. And starvation patterns were as ever uneven – London with its wealth kept drawing in grain. “Agenoese speculator responded to the exceptional prices previaling… by shipping 1,000 quarters of wheat to London and selling it to an agent of the king.” Areas near London, whose produce was shipped in, however, did badly.
“Probably between a quarter of a million and half a million people perished of starvation and starvation diseases in England’s worst recorded subsistence crisis.”
An interesting portrait of rural England, drawn from B.M.S. Campbell, “The land”, in R. Horrock and W.M. Ormrod, A Social History of England, 1200-1500, 2006 (which is I’d imagine intended as an undergraduate text – the intro has what I thought was a very good survey of the main theoretical arguments about the Middle Ages.)
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