CHAPTER XIV. 



FODDER AND HAY. 



AMONG the various kinds of fodder three have been collected 

 in a tabular form., and will be found in pp. 178-180, 391, 392 

 of the second volume. They are bundles of vetches and peas, 

 grass by the acre, and hay. 



Bundles of vetches and peas have seldom been found, except 

 in the Elham records. Merton College, who possessed by a gift 

 of Edward the First the great tithes, the advowson of the vicar- 

 age, and some land in the parish, found this, in the Middle Ages, 

 the most valuable of their estates, and, as we shall see below, 

 dealt extensively in horses, which they either bred or improved 

 on their land. The bundles of vetches and peas, the sale of 

 which is stated in the bailiffs' accounts, were in all likelihood 

 tithe taken from the produce of the parish, and afterwards 

 either employed in order to maintain the horses which were 

 kept, or more frequently retailed as they stood in stack or 

 grange. The chief interest which they possess as a record is 

 that of being subsidiary to the prices of the seed which they 

 contained, and as being therefore suggestive of cheap or dear 

 years; being on some occasions, as in 1345 and 1348, exces- 

 sively low, and in others, as in 1320 and 1321, very dear. To 

 judge from the general price, the bundle contained rather more 

 than half a bushel of unthreshed peas or vetches. Towards 

 the close of the period some few entries are obtained from 

 other parts of Kent. They do not seem, to judge from the 

 few dates which are given of the times of sale, to have 



