much butter as shall make as much cheese.’[86] It was a common practice all through the Middle Ages, and survives in localities to-day, to let out the cows by the year, at from 3s. to 6s. 8d. a head, often to the daya or dairymaid, the owner supplying the food, and the lessee agreeing to restore them in equal number and condition at the end of the term.[87] The anonymous treatise tells us that ’if you wish to farm out your stock you can take 4s. 6d. clear for each cow and the tithe, and for a sheep 6d. and the tithe, and a sow should bring you 6s. 6d. a year and acquit the tithe, and each hen 9d. and the tithe; and Walter says, ’When I was bailiff the 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 3-1/2d.  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. 10-3/4d. a quarter, and from 1401 to 1540 5s. 11-3/4d.; of barley, 4s. 3-3/4d. from 1259 to 1400, 3s. 8-3/4d. from 1401 to 1540; of oats, 2s. 5-3/4d. and 2s. 2-1/4d. in the same two periods respectively; of rye, 4s. 5d. and 4s. 7-3/4d.; and of beans, 4s. 3-1/2d. and 3s. 9-1/4d.[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,