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, Industry and Commerce, i. 117.

[70] Vinogradoff, Villeinage in England, p. 307.  On the Berkeley estates in 1189-1220 money was so scarce with the tenants that the rents, apparently even where services had been commuted, were commonly paid in oxen.—­Smyth, Lives of the Berkeleys, i. 101.  In the thirteenth century the labour services of the villeins were stricter than in the eleventh.  Vinogradoff, op. cit. 298.

[71] Page, End of Villeinage, p. 39.

[72] Thorold Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices, i. 82.

[73] Hampshire Record Society, i. 64.  See Appendix, i.

[74] Hasbach, English Agricultural Labourer, p. 14.

[75] Hallam, Middle Ages, iii. 361

[76] Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century, p. 56.

[77] Cunningham, Industry and Commerce, i. 273.

[78] Cullum, History of Hawsted, 1784 ed., p. 180.

[79] Ballard, Domesday, p. 207.

[80] Walter of Henley, Royal Historical Society, p. 12.

[81] Walter reckons the above food of the horse at 12s. 3d., and of the ox at 3s. 1d.; but both are wrong.

[82] Ibid. p. 15.

[83] Walter of Henley, Royal Historical Society, p. 19.

[84] Walter of Henley, Royal Historical Society, p. 71.

[85] Davenport, A Norfolk Manor, pp. 29 et seq.  See also Hall, Pipe Roll of the Bishopric of Winchester, p. xxvi, which gives an average yield of wheat over a large area in 1298-9 at 4.3 bushels per acre.

[86] Walter of Henley, Royal Historical Society, p. 77.

[87] Thorold Rogers, Agriculture and Prices, i. 397; Archaeologia, xviii. 281.

[88] Walter of Henley, pp. 69, 75.  In Lancashire, at the end of the thirteenth century, mowing 60-1/2 acres cost 17s. 7-1/2d. Victoria County History, Lancashire, Agriculture, and Two Compoti of the Lancashire and Cheshire Manors of Henry de Lacy (Cheetham Society).