and, for the well-to-do, fish, but we may doubt if the peasant got any but salt fish.  The consequence was that leprosy and kindred ailments were common; and we do not wonder that plagues were frequent and slew the people like flies.  The peasants’ food consisted largely of corn.  In the bailiff’s accounts of the Manor of Woodstock in 1242, six servants at Handborough received 41-1/2 bushels of corn each, 2 ox herds at Combe received the same, and 4 servants at Bladon had 36 bushels each.  In 1274 at Bosham, and in 1288 at Stoughton in Sussex, the allowance was the same.[142] The writer of the anonymous Treatise on Husbandry says that in his time, the thirteenth century, the average annual allowance of corn to a labourer was 36 bushels.[143] Fish, too, seem to have formed a large portion of his diet; all classes ate enormous quantities of fish, before the Reformation, in Lent and on fast days, and the labourer was constantly given salt herrings as part of his pay.  In 1359, at Hawsted, the villeins when working were allowed 2 herrings a day, some milk, a loaf, and some drink.[144] Eden[145] says his food consisted of a few fish, principally herrings, a loaf of bread, and some beer; but we must certainly add pork, which was his stand-by then as now.[146] In the fourteenth century, at all events, there were three kinds of bread in use—­white bread, ration bread, and black bread; and it was no doubt the latter that the peasant ate.[147] Clothing was dear and cloth coarse, the most valuable personal property consisting of clothing and metal vessels.  Shirts were the subject of charitable gifts.[148] By 37 Edw.  III, c. 14, labourers were not to wear any manner of cloth but ‘blanket and russet wool of 12d.’ and girdles of linen.  If they wore anything more extravagant it was forfeited to the king.

To the labourer of modern times the life of his forefathers would have seemed unutterably dull.  No books, no newspapers, no change of scene by cheap excursions, no village school, no politics.  The very cultivation of the soil by the old three-course system was monotonous.  But there were bright spots in his existence:  the village church not only afforded him the consolations of religion but also entertainments and society.  Religion in the Middle Ages was a part of the people’s daily life, and its influence permeated even their amusements.  Miracles and mystery plays, played in the churches and churchyards, were a common feature in village life; as were the church ales or parish meetings held four or five times a year, where cakes and beer were purchased from the churchwarden and consumed for the good of the parish.  Indeed, there can be no doubt that there was much more sociability than to-day, in the country at least.  Labour was lightened by the co-operation of the common fields; common shepherds and herdsmen watched the sheep and cattle of the different tenants, ’a common mill ground the corn, a common oven baked the bread, a common