Cullum, in his invaluable History of Hawsted, gives us a picture of harvesting on the demesne lands in 1389 which shows an extraordinarily busy scene.  There were 200 acres of all kinds of corn to be gathered in, and over 300 people took part; though apparently such a crowd was only collected for the two principal days of the harvest, and it must be remembered that the towns were emptied into the country at this important season.  The number of people for one day comprised a carter, ploughman, head reaper, cook, baker, brewer, shepherd, daya (dairymaid); 221 hired reapers; 44 pitchers, stackers, and reapers (not hired, evidently villeins paying their rents by work); 22 other reapers, hired for goodwill (de amore); and 20 customary tenants.  This small army of men consumed 22 bushels of wheat, 8 pennyworth of beer, and 41 bushels of malt, worth 18s. 9-1/2d.; meat to the value of 9s. 11-1/2d.; fish and herrings, 5s. 1d.; cheese, butter, milk, and eggs, 8s. 3-1/2d.; oatmeal, 5d. salt, 3d.; pepper and saffron, 10d., the latter apparently introduced into England in the time of Edward III, and much used for cooking and medicine, but it gradually went out of fashion, and by the end of the eighteenth century was only cultivated in one or two counties, notably Essex where Saffron Walden recalls its use; candles, 6d.; and 5 pairs of gloves 10d.[165]

The presentation of gloves was a common custom in England; and these would be presented as a sign of good husbandry, as in the case of the rural bridegroom in the account of Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Kenilworth who wore gloves to show he was a good farmer.  Tusser bids the farmer give gloves to his reapers.  The custom was still observed at Hawsted in 1784, and in Eden’s time, 1797, the bursars of New College, Oxford, presented each of their tenants with two pairs, which the recipients displayed on the following Sunday at church by conspicuously hanging their hands over the pew to show their neighbours they had paid their rent.  In this account of the Hawsted harvest the large number of hired men and the few customary tenants is noteworthy as a sign of the times, for before the Black Death the harvest work on the demesne was the special work of the latter.

In the fourteenth century the long series of corn laws was commenced which was to agitate Englishmen for centuries, and after an apparently final settlement in 1846 to reappear in our day.[166] It was the policy of Edward III to make food plentiful and cheap for the whole nation, without special regard to the agricultural interest:  and by 34 Edw.  III, c. 20, the export of corn to any foreign part except Calais and Gascony, then British possessions, or to certain places which the king might permit, was forbidden.  Richard II, however, reversed this policy in answer to the complaints of agriculturists whose rents were falling,[167] and endeavoured to encourage the farmer and especially the corn-grower; for he saw the landlords turning their