A Short History of English Agriculture. W. H. R. Curtler
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dairymaids had the geese and hens to farm, the geese at 12d. and the hens at 3d.'
Among other information conveyed by these two treatises we learn that the poor servants or labourers were accustomed to be fed on the diseased sheep, salted and dried; but Walter adds, 'I do not wish you to do this.' Nor can we point the finger of scorn at this: for in the disastrous season of 1879 numbers of rotten sheep were sold to the butcher and consumed by the unsuspecting public without even being salted and dried.
He further tells us that 'you can well have 3 acres weeded for 1d., and an acre of meadow mown for 4d., and an acre of waste meadow for 31/2d. And know that 5 men can well reap and bind 2 acres a day of each kind of corn, and where each takes 2d. a day then you must give 5d. an acre.'[88] 'One ought to thresh a quarter of wheat or rye for 2d. and a quarter of oats for 1d. A sow ought to farrow twice a year, having each time at least 7 pigs; and each goose 5 goslings a year and each hen 115 eggs and 7 chicks, 3 of which ought to be made capons; and for 5 geese you must have one gander, and for 5 hens one cock.' The laying qualities of the hen, in spite of the talk of the 200-egg bird, were evidently as good then as to-day. In those days of self-supporting farms it was the custom to put together the farm implements at home, and the farmer is advised that it will be well if he can have carters and ploughmen who should know how to work all their own wood, though it should be necessary to pay them more.[89] The village smith, however, seems, as we should expect, to have done most of the iron work that was needed.[90]
These extracts have given the reader some insight into thirteenth-century prices, prices which in the case of grain altered very little for nearly 300 years: for instance, the average price of wheat from 1259 to 1400 was 5s. 103/4d. a quarter, and from 1401 to 1540 5s. 113/4d.; of barley, 4s. 33/4d. from 1259 to 1400, 3s. 83/4d. from 1401 to 1540; of oats, 2s. 53/4d. and 2s. 21/4d. in the same two periods respectively; of rye, 4s. 5d. and 4s. 73/4d.; and of beans, 4s. 31/2d. and 3s. 91/4d.[91] Wheat fluctuated considerably, being as we have seen 2s. a quarter at Hawsted in 1243 and in 1290 14s. 10d., a most exceptional price. Oxen, which were chiefly valued as working animals, were about 13s. apiece[92]; cows, 9s. 5d. Farm horses were of two varieties: the 'affer' or 'stott', a rough small animal, generally worth about 13s. 5d., and the cart-horse, probably the ancestor of our shire horses, whose average price was 19s. 4d. A good saddle-horse fetched as much as £5. Sheep were from 1s. 2d. to 1s. 5d. each. In Hampshire in 1248 shoeing ten farm horses for the plough for a year cost 5s.; making a gate cost 12d. As Walter of Henley said, it cost a penny a week to shoe a horse on all four feet; these horses must have been very roughly shod.[93] It is evident, from what Walter of Henley says, that horses were not always shod on all four feet, and their shoes were generally very light. The roads were mere tracks without any metalling, so that there was little necessity for heavy shoes; and as Professor Thorold Rogers suggests, it is quite possible that the hoofs of our horses have become weaker by reason of the continual paring and protection which modern shoeing involves.[94] They weighed usually less than half a pound, and cost about 4s. a hundred.
The most striking fact about agricultural prices at this date is the low price of land compared with that of its products. The annual rent of land was from 4d. to 6d.[95] an acre, and it was worth about ten years' purchase. Consequently, a quarter of wheat was often worth more than an acre of land, a good ox three times as much, a good cart-horse four times, while a good war-horse was worth the fee-simple of a small farm. A greater breadth of wheat was sown than of any other crop; but it seems that none was ever stored except in the castles and monasteries, for in spite of successive abundant harvests a bad season would send the price up at once. Barley was, as now, chiefly used for making beer, which was also made from oats and wheat, of course without hops, which were not used till the fifteenth century; and sometimes it was made of oats, barley, and wheat, a concoction worth 3/4d. a gallon in 1283.[96] Cider was also drunk, and was sold at Exminster in Devonshire in 1286 at 1/2d. a gallon, and apples fetched 2d. a bushel. Thorold Rogers[97] says that wheat was the chief food of the English labourer from the earliest times until perhaps the seventeenth century, when the enormous prices were prohibitive; but this statement must be taken with reserve, as must that of Mr. Prothero[98] that rye was the bread-stuff of the peasantry. Where the labourer's food is mentioned as part of his wages, wheat, barley, and rye all occur, wheat and rye being often mixed together as 'mixtil'; and it is most probable that in one district wheat, in another one of the other cereals, formed his chief bread-stuff, according to the crop best adapted to the soil of the locality.
Walter of Henley mentions wheat as if it was the chief crop, for he selects it as best illustrating the cost of corn-growing[99]; and from the enormous number of entries enumerated by Thorold Rogers in his mediaeval statistics it was apparently more grown than other cereals. The chief meat of the lower classes then, as to-day, was bacon from the innumerable herds of swine who roamed in the woods and wastes, but in bad years, when food was scarce, the poor ate nuts, acorns, fern roots, bark, and vetches.[100]
As the cattle of the Middle Ages were like the mountain cattle of to-day, so were the sheep like many of the sheep to be seen in the Welsh mountains; yet, unlike the cattle, an attempt seems to have been made, judging by the high price of rams, to improve the breed; but they were probably poor animals worth from 1s. to 1s. 6d. each, with a small fleece weighing about a pound and a half, worth 3d. a lb. or a little more.
FOOTNOTES:
[64] Six Centuries of Work and Wages, p. 39. No one can write on English agriculture without acknowledging a deep debt to his monumental industry, though his opinions are often open to question.
[65] Compare the account of the manors in Huntingdonshire belonging to Romsey Abbey given in Page End of Villeinage in England, pp. 28 et seq.
[66] Davenport, A Norfolk Manor, p. 36; and see Hall, Pipe Roll of Bishopric of Winchester, p. xxv.
[67] Chevage, poll money, paid to the lord.
[68] Vinogradoff, Villeinage in England, p. 230.
[69] Cunningham,