[47] The illustrations of contemporary MSS. usually show teams in the plough of 2 or 4 oxen, and 4 was probably the team generally used, according to Vinogradoff, op. cit. p. 253.  It must, of course, have varied according to the soil.  Birch, in his Domesday, p. 219, says he has never found a team of 8 in contemporary illustrations.  To-day oxen can be still seen ploughing in teams of two only.  However, about a hundred years ago, when oxen were in common use, we find teams of 8, as in Shropshire, for a single-furrow plough, ’so as to work them easily.’  Six hours a day was the usual day’s work, and when more was required one team was worked in the morning, another in the afternoon.—­Victoria County History:  Shropshire, Agriculture.  Walter of Henley says the team stopped work at three.

[48] Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, i. 570.

[49] See the excellent reproductions of the Calendar of the Cott.  MSS. in Green’s Short History of the English People, illustrated edition, i. 155.

[50] De Natura Rerum, Rolls Series, p, 280.

[51] Vinogradoff, English Society in the Eleventh Century, p. 307.

[52] Ibid. p. 312.  Perhaps one of the most interesting features of the smaller manors is that they were constantly being swallowed up by the larger.

[53] As some of the common pasture was held in severalty, this may perhaps have been mown in scarce years.  Walter of Henley mentions mowing the waste, see below, p. 34.

[54] Maitland, Domesday Book, 436; Board of Agriculture Returns, 1907.

[55] Vinogradoff, English Society in the Eleventh Century, p. 310; Birch, Domesday, p. 183.

[56] Maitland, Domesday Book. 44; Cunningham, Growth of Industry and Commerce, i. 171; Domesday of S. Paul, pp. xliii. and xci.

[57] Cullum, History of Hawsted, p. 181.

[58] Rolls Series, ii. 220.  According to this, the price of a bushel of wheat reckoned in modern money was L3 in that year

[59] Ibid. iii. 220.

[60] Holinshed, who is supported by William of Malmesbury in the assertion that in time of scarcity England imported corn.  Matthew Paris, Chron.  Maj., v. 673.

[61] Jusserand, English Wayfaring Life, p. 79.

[62] Jusserand, English Wayfaring Life, p. 89.

[63] Gilbert Slater, The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields, p. 8.

CHAPTER II

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.—­THE MANOR AT ITS ZENITH, WITH SEEDS OF DECAY ALREADY VISIBLE.—­WALTER OF HENLEY