l8 MEDIEVAL AGRICULTURE. 



cider, and its low price seems to suggest that it was made 

 in considerable quantities. Sometimes, too, wine was grown 

 in England, though not, perhaps, so frequently as has been 

 imagined, the word vivarium having been, it appears, often 

 read as vinarium. Crabs were collected in order to manu- 

 facture verjuice an important item in medieval cookery. 

 Bees, though honey was dear and wax very high priced, do 

 not seem to have been commonly kept, though some few 

 entries of hives and swarms have been found. 



None of the servants were, it would seem, maintained in 

 the house, except occasionally during harvest. Robert Old- 

 man, the bailiff of Cuxham, in the account printed in vol. ii., 

 was one of the villains of the manor, though his position 

 suggests that an officer, to whose hands so much was entrusted, 

 could not have been the serf without rights or property, which 

 our historians are accustomed to consider the villain of that 

 epoch to have been. The Oldmans, father and son, were 

 bailiffs of this manor during the greater part of the time 

 in which it was farmed by the college*. 



The bailiff appears to have regularly attended the markets. 

 The Cuxham bailiff" goes to Henley-on-Thames, the river 

 being, in the middle ages, permanently navigable to London, 

 it seems, from this point only. One of the customary services 

 on this manor is that of carriage to Henley. 



The regular farm servants, after the bailiff!, were the plough- 

 men and drivers, one to each plough, the carters, the cow or 

 oxherd, the pig-keeper, and the dairy-woman. In case sheep 

 were kept, one or two shepherds were engaged. All these 

 persons had land and stock of their own. The dairy-woman 

 often purchases the calves, the shepherd has his own little 

 flock, and is occasionally remunerated by permission to use 

 the lord's pasture. 



The stock on the farm is varied. Horses, oxen, cows, and 



a Similarly, ii. 6ll. ii., it is clear from the entry given, that the bailiff of 

 Stillington was a serf of the house, for it was from such persons only that the lord 

 was entitled to exact a fine on a daughter's marriage or a son's education. 



