The manorial accounts of the Knights’ Hospitallers, who then held land all over England, afford valuable information as to agriculture in 1338.[108] From these we gather that the rent of arable land varied from 2d. to 2s. an acre; but the latter sum was very exceptional, and there are only two instances of it given, in Lincolnshire and Kent.  Most of the tillage rented for less than 1s. an acre, more than half being at 6d. or under, and the average about 6d.  On the other hand, meadow land is seldom of less value than 2s. an acre, and in Warwickshire, Oxfordshire, and Norfolk rose to 3s.  This is one of the numerous proofs of the great value of meadow land at a time when hay was almost the sole winter food of stock; in some places it was eight or ten times as valuable as the arable.[109] The pasture on the Hospitallers’ estates was divided into several and common pasture, the former often reaching 1s. an acre and sometimes 2s., the latter rarely exceeding 4d.  The most usual way, however, of stating the value of pasture was by reckoning the annual cost of feeding stock per head, cows being valued at 2s., oxen at 1s., a horse at a little less than an ox, a sheep at 1d.  The reign of Edward III was a great era for wool-growers, and the Hospitallers at Hampton in Middlesex had a flock of 2,000 sheep whose annual produce was six sacks of wool of 364 lb. each, worth L4 a sack, which would make the fleeces weigh a little more than 1 lb. each.  The profit of cows on one of their manors was reckoned at 2s. per head, on another at 3s.; and the profit of 100 sheep at 20s.[110] The wages paid to the labourers for day work were 2d. a day, and we must remember that when he was paid by the day his wages were rightly higher than when regularly employed, for day labour was irregular and casual.  The tenants about the same date obtained the following prices[111] for some of their stock:—­

L s. d.

A good ox, alive, fatted on corn          1   4   0
"       "        "  not on corn         16   0
A fatted cow                                 12   0
A two-year-old hog                            3   4
A sheep and its fleece                        1   8
A fatted sheep, shorn                         1   2
"   goose                                0   3
Hens, each[112]                               0   2
20 eggs                                       0   1

In the middle of the fourteenth century occurred the famous Black Death, the worst infliction that has ever visited England.  Its story is too well known for repetition, and it suffices to say that it was like the bubonic plague in the East of to-day:  it raged in 1348-9, and killed from one-third to one-half of the people.[113] It is said to have effected more important economic results than any other event in English history.  It is probable that the prices of labour were rising before this terrible calamity; the dreadful famine of 1315-6,[114] followed by pestilence, when wheat went up to 26s. a quarter, and according