Part 5 (2/2)
[112] Poultry-keeping was wellnigh universal, judging by the number of rents paid in fowls and eggs.
[113] 1348 seems also to have been an excessively rainy year. The wet season was very disastrous to live stock; according to the accounts of the manors of Christ Church, Canterbury, about this time (_Historical MSS. Commission, 5th Report_, 444) there died of the murrain on their estates 257 oxen, 511 cows, 4,585 sheep. Murrain was the name given to all diseases of stock in the Middle Ages, and is of constant occurrence in old records.
[114] The cause of this as usual was incessant rain during the greater part of the summer; the chronicles of the time say that not only were the crops very short but those that did grow were diseased and yielded no nourishment. The 'murrain' was so deadly to oxen and sheep that, according to Walsingham, dogs and ravens eating them dropped down dead.
[115] See Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, i. 335. Also in an age when the idea of Compet.i.tive price had not yet been evolved, and when regulation by authority was the custom, it was natural and right that the Government in such a crisis should try to check the demands of both labourers and producers, which went far beyond what employers or consumers could pay. Putnam, _Enforcement of the Statute of Labourers_, 220.
[116] The average price of wheat in 1351 was 10s. 2-1/2d., which went down to 7s. 2d. next year, and 4s. 2-1/2d. the year after; but judging by the ineffectiveness of the statute to reduce wages, it probably had little effect in causing this fall.
[117] See Appendix I.
[118] Putnam, _op. cit._, 221. The statute for the first ten years, however, kept wages from ascending as high as might have been the case.
[119] McPherson, _Annals of Commerce_, i. 543, says that as the plague diminished the number of employers as well as labourers, the demand for labour could not have been much greater than before, and would have had little effect on the rate of if Edward III had not debased the coinage. But if the owners did decrease the lands would only acc.u.mulate in fewer hands, and would still require cultivation.
[120] Page, _End of Villeinage_, pp. 59 et seq.
[121] Ibid. p. 44.
[122] _Transactions_, Royal Historical Society, New Series, xiv. 123.
[123] This had been done before, but was now much more frequent.
Hasbach, _op. cit._ p. 17.
[124] 'After the Black Death the flight of villeins was extremely common.'--Page, _op. cit._, p. 40.
[125] Na.s.se, _Agricultural Community of the Middle Ages_, p. 1.
[126] Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, i. 137.
CHAPTER IV
HOW THE CLa.s.sES CONNECTED WITH THE LAND LIVED IN THE MIDDLE AGES
The castles of the great landowners have been so often described that there is no need to do this again. The popular idea of a baron of the Middle Ages is of a man who when he was not fighting was jousting or hunting. Such were, no doubt, his chief recreations; so fond was he of hunting, indeed, that his own broad lands were not enough, and he was a frequent trespa.s.ser on those of others; the records of the time are full of cases which show that poaching was quite a fas.h.i.+onable amus.e.m.e.nt among the upper cla.s.ses. But among the barons were many men who, like their successors to-day, did their duty as landlords. Of one of the Lords of Berkeley in the fourteenth century, it was said he was 'sometyme in husbandry at home, sometyme at sport in the field, sometyme in the campe, sometyme in the Court and Council of State, with that promptness and celerity that his body might have bene believed to be ubiquitary'. Many of them were farmers on a very large scale, though they might not have so much time to devote to it as those excellent landlords the monks.
Thomas Lord Berkeley, who held the Berkeley estates from 1326 to 1361, farmed the demesnes of a quant.i.ty of manors, as was the custom, and kept thereon great flocks of sheep, ranging from 300 to 1,500 on each manor.[127] The stock of the Bishop of Winchester, by an inquisition taken at his death in 1367, amounted to 127 draught horses, 1,556 head of black cattle, and 12,104 sheep and lambs. Almost every manor had one or two pigeon houses, and the number of pigeons reared is astonis.h.i.+ng; from one manor Lord Berkeley obtained 2,151 pigeons in a single year. No one but the lord was allowed to keep them, and they were one of the chief grievances of the villeins, who saw their seed devoured by these pests without redress. Their dung, too, was one of the most valued manures. Lord Berkeley, like other landlords, went often in progress from one of his manors and farmhouses to another, making his stay at each of them for one or two nights, overseeing and directing the husbandry. The castle of the great n.o.ble consumed an enormous amount of food in the course of the year; from two manors on the Berkeley estate came to the 'standinghouse' of the lord in twelve months, 17,000 eggs, 1,008 pigeons, 91 capons, 192 hens, 288 ducks, 388 chickens, 194 pigs, 45 calves, 315 quarters of wheat, 304 quarters of oats; and from several other manors came the like or greater store, besides goats, sheep, oxen, b.u.t.ter, cheese, nuts, honey, &c.[128] Even the lavish hospitality of the lords, and the great number of their retainers, must have had some difficulty in disposing of these huge supplies.
The examining of their bailiff's accounts must have taken a considerable portion of the landlord's time, for those of each manor were kept most minutely, and set forth, among other items, 'in what sort he husbanded' the demesne farms, 'what sorts of cattle he kept in them, and what kinds of graine he yearly sowed according to the quality and condition of the ground, and how those kinds of graine each second or third yeare were exchanged or brought from one manor to another as the vale corne into an upland soyle, and contrarily'. And we are told incidentally he 'set with hand, not sowed his beanes'. He was also accustomed to move his live stock from one manor to another, as they needed it.
The accounts also stated what days' works were due from each tenant according to the season of the year, and at the end of each year there was a careful valuation of live and dead stock.[129]
The difference between the smaller gentry and the more important yeomen[130] who farmed their own land must have been very slight. No doubt both of them were very rough and ignorant men, who knew a great deal about the cultivation of their land and very little about anything else. We may be sure that the ordinary house of both was generally of wood; as there is no stone in many parts of England, and bricks were not reintroduced till the fourteenth century and spread slowly. Even in Elizabeth's reign, Harrison[131] tells us that 'the ancient houses of our gentry are yet for the most part of strong timber', and he even thinks that houses made of oak were luxurious, for in times past men had been contented with houses of willow, plum, and elm, but now nothing but oak was good enough; and he quaintly says that the men who lived in the willow houses were as tough as oak, and those who lived in the oak as soft as willow. There are very few mansions left of the time before Edward III, for being of timber they naturally decayed.
In a lease, dated 1152, of a manor house belonging to S. Paul's Cathedral,[132] is a description of a manor house which contained a hall 35 feet long, 30 feet broad, and 22 feet high; that is, 11 feet to the tie beam and 11 feet from that to the ridge board; showing that the roof was open and that there were no upper rooms. There was a chamber between the hall and the thalamus or inner room which was 12 feet long, 17 feet broad, and 17 feet high, the roof being open as in the hall; and the thalamus was 22 feet long, 16 feet broad, and 18 feet high. About the same date the Manor house of Thorp was larger, and contained a hall, a chamber, tresantia (apparently part of the hall or chamber separated by a screen to form an antechamber), two private rooms, a kitchen, brew-house, malt-house, dairy, ox shed, and three small hen-houses.
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