THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES. 53 



cheapness of meat, is conclusive as to their being like the 

 Welch or mountain sheep of modern times. Besides, the 

 weight of a fleece is seldom more than two pounds, often very 

 much less, as may be seen from the table ; and the quality 

 of the wool, as may be gathered from existing specimens of 

 cloth, was coarse, and the fibre was full of hairs a. 



Under such unfavourable conditions it is not likely that 

 cattle should be large. I have, indeed, no direct evidence 

 of the time before me as to the weight they reached, for 

 meat is never or very rarely sold by the pound. But I have 

 copied an account from the Public Record Office of the 

 weights of forty oxen purchased for the navy in 1547. There 

 is no reason to believe that cattle had deteriorated in this 

 time; it is possible that they may have improved, judging from 

 the rise in price in the period before me. But the average 

 weight of these oxen is less than four hundred. 



There are occasional entries of the price of sheep, which 

 suggest attempts to improve the breed. Rams, called inva- 

 riably hurtardi in these accounts, are generally high priced, 

 and sometimes, relatively speaking, costly. Thus, vol. ii. 

 p. 22i.ii., the bailiff of Westshene (then, and long after, an 

 estate of the king) purchases some rams in Essex at prices 

 ranging from 5^. $d. to 35-. 6d. the latter being a rate seldom 

 reached, the former being quite unprecedented. But no such 

 attempt seems to be made with cattle. Bulls are always low 

 priced. 



The losses of stock sustained by the medieval farmer were 

 enormous. As has been said, all deaths were grouped under 

 the general name c murrain.' But at Maldon the farmer, in 

 1333, reports the loss of more than half his sheep and lambs; 

 at Letherhead the loss is little short of the same rate ; at 

 Farley it is more than twenty-five per cent. ; at Wolford 



* The leather and iron-bound mitre-case of Wykeham, and a travelling bag 

 belonging to the same personage, are still preserved in the muniment room of New 

 College. They are both lined with cloth, but the texture and quality of the material 

 fully bear out the observation made as to the merits of English wool. 



