THE KULES OF S. ROBERT 145 



The twenty-sixth rule teaches how at michaelmas 

 you may arrange your sojourn for all the year. 



Every year, at Michaelmas, when you know the 

 measure of all your corn, then arrange your sojourn for the 

 whole of that year, and for how many weeks in each place, 

 according to the seasons of the year, and the advantages of 

 the country in flesh and in fish, and do not in any wise 

 burden by debt or long residence the places where you 

 sojourn, but so arrange your sojourns that the place at your 

 departure shall not remain in debt, but something may re- 

 main on the manor, whereby the manor can raise money from 

 increase of stock, and especially cows and sheep, until your 

 stock acquits your wines, robes, wax, and all your wardrobe, 

 and that will be in a short time if you hold and act after this 

 treatise as you can see plainly in this way. The wool of a 

 thousand sheep in good pasture at the least ought to yield 

 fifty marks a year, the wool of two thousand a hundred 

 marks, and so forth, counting by thousands. The wool of a 

 thousand sheep in scant pasture ought at the least to yield 

 forty marks, in coarse and poor pasture thirty marks. 



The twenty-seventh rule teaches you how much the 

 return from cows and sheep is worth. 



The return from cows and sheep in cheese is worth much 

 money every day in the season, without calves and lambs, 

 and without the manure, which all return corn and fruit. 



The twenty-eighth rule teaches you at what times 

 in the year you ought to make your purchases. 



I advise that at two seasons of the year you make your 

 principal purchases, that is to say your wines, and your 

 wax, and your wardrobe, at the fair of St. Botolph, what 

 you shall spend in Lindsey and in Norfolk, in the Vale of 

 Belvoir, and in the country of Caversham, and in that at 

 Southampton for Winchester, and Somerset at Bristol ; 

 your robes purchase at St. Ives. 



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