. The story of a grain of wheat. f thenotable struggle between landlord and tenant,between the public and the lord, which followedthe execution of the feudal law of milling soke inEngland; a characteristic fight of the Britonagainst oppression. Soke or soc was the monop-oly formerly claimed by the mill-owner of grind-ing all the grain used within the manor or town-ship in which themill stood. Thequern was thepoor mans mill,operated in hisown house with-out toll. Thelords of the manorin granting char-ters to their ten-ants usually stip-ulated for a reser-vation of all mill-ing rights andprivile
. The story of a grain of wheat. f thenotable struggle between landlord and tenant,between the public and the lord, which followedthe execution of the feudal law of milling soke inEngland; a characteristic fight of the Britonagainst oppression. Soke or soc was the monop-oly formerly claimed by the mill-owner of grind-ing all the grain used within the manor or town-ship in which themill stood. Thequern was thepoor mans mill,operated in hisown house with-out toll. Thelords of the manorin granting char-ters to their ten-ants usually stip-ulated for a reser-vation of all mill-ing rights andprivileges, com-pelling tenants tooperate the millsthey erected, andforbidding the useof querns. Whenreligious institutions were endowed with gifts ofmills—a frequent occurrence—the grants gave themonks the exclusive right to grind grain for thedistrict and prohibited hand-mills. One of theearliest milling documents is a charter given tothe monks of Embsay Priory, Yorkshire, in rights of the kings mills of Dee, at Chester,. Quern. Isle of Man. THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 139 were confirmed by Edward III in 1356, and theuse of hand-mills was forbidden. The laws estab-lishing such rights are older than the Englishstatutes. These customs prevailed in a more orless stringent form throughout Europe for manycenturies, and were the cause of a determinedeffort to suppress querns, which lasted seven hun-dred years, from the eleventh to the eighteenthcentury. In order to secure an absolute monopo-ly of the milling business in the district protectedby the custom of milling soke, the manorial lordswaged a war of extermination against were purchased, others stolen, and all thusobtained were destroyed. King, priest, and squireinsisted on their rights and searched the cottagesfor the forbidden machines, dragging them forthfrom their hiding-places and breaking them the peasant objected, the law was appealed to,and it invariably sustained the strong against theweak. Th
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookpublishernewyo, bookyear1903
