themselves’ and find their own forks and rakes.  Shearers or reapers were paid from 8d. to 10d., and found their own sickles; binders and stackers, 8d.; mowers of ‘haver’, or oats, 10d., a good mower cutting 4 acres a day.  In 1641 he sold oats for 14s. a quarter, best barley for 22s., rye 27s. 6d., wheat 30s.[314] The roads were dreadful, and produce nearly all sent to market on pack-horses.  ’Wee seldome send fewer than 8 horse loads to the market at a time, and with them two men, for one man cannot guide the poakes (sacks) of above four horses.  When wee sende oats to the market wee sack them up in 3 bushel poakes and lay 6 bushels on a horse; when wee sende wheate, rye, or masseldene (rye and wheat) and barley to market wee put it into mette poakes (2 bushel sacks), sometimes into half quarter sacks, and these we lay on horses that are short coupled and well backed.’  When the servants got to market they were charged a halfpenny a horse for stabling and hay, but if they dined at the inn they paid nothing for their horses, and their dinners cost them 4d. a head.  Butter was sold by the lb., or the ‘cake’ of 2 lb., and in the beginning of Lent was 5d. a lb., by April 20, 3d., in the middle of May, 2-1/2d.  When William Pinder took 50 acres of land ‘of my Lord Haye’ he paid a fine of L60 and a rent of L40; but this must have been an extremely choice piece of land, for arable land rented apparently at less than 3s. an acre.[315] The rent of a cottage was usually 10s. a year, ’though they have not so much as a yard or any backe side belonging to them.’  There is more evidence, if such were needed, of the beneficial effect of enclosure, which was said to treble the value of pasture.  Good meadow land fetched a great price:  ’The medow Sykes is about 5 acres of grounde, and was letten in the year 1628 at L6 per annum, and in 1635 at L6 13s. 4d.

The requirements of a foreman on a farm were that he could sow, mow, stack peas, go well with 4 horses, and be accustomed to marketing; and for this when hired by the year he received 5 marks, and perhaps half a crown as earnest money.  The next man got 50s., the next 46s. 6d., the fourth 35s.  ’Christopher Pearson had the first year he dwelt here L3 5s. 0d. wages per annum and 5s. to a God’s penny (earnest money); next year he had L4 wages, and he was both a good seedsman,’ before the invention of drills a very valuable qualification, ’and did sow all our seed both the years.  When you are about to hire a servant you are to call them aside and talk privately with them concerning their wage, and if the servants stand in the churchyard they usually call them aside and walk to the back side of the church and there treat of their wage.  I heard a servant asked what he could do, who made this answer: 

     “I can sowe,
     I can mowe,
     And I can stacke;
     And I can doe
     My master too
     When my master turns his backe".’

If we are to judge by the food provided for the thatchers, who were little better than ordinary labourers, the Yorkshire farm-hand fared well on plenty of simple food, his three meals a day consisting of butter, milk, cheese, and either eggs, pies, or bacon, sometimes porridge instead of milk.