285 ON THE PRICE OF LABOUR. 



Among sundry kinds of labour for which payment is re- 

 corded in the accounts, are those of taking partridges and 

 rabbits with falcon, dog, and ferret, of weighing wool and lead, 

 of mending a clock, of making ploughshares and millstones, of 

 plumbing lead, of digging iron-stone, of blowing blooms of iron, 

 of tanning hides, of binding books, and even of sinking a shaft 

 for a coal-pit. The cost of carrying letters from Sussex to 

 London is recorded, and of conveying money from London 

 to Oxford. The hire of sheep to lie on land in order to improve 

 its fertility is noted under 1309, 1335, and 1339. 



Under the head of labour I may call attention to a short 

 table of prices paid for marling land, in vol. ii. pp. 454-5. Two 

 rates are adopted in the few examples which I have collected, 

 for the entries might have been more numerous had I been 

 able to discover at an earlier time what was the meaning of 

 c glisceratio.' These rates are by the hundred load, or by the 

 acre. It would seem, to judge from the similarity between 

 the sum paid for this service at either rate, that a hundred 

 loads to the acre was the usual dressing, though in one or two 

 places, as at Weston in 1293, and at Usk, vol. ii. p. 578. iv., 

 the price paid for the acre is very high. The service consisted 

 in carting marl from some place outside the land of the person 

 who used this manure, and occasionally, as in 1267, the 

 spreading of marl is distinguished from the labour of digging 

 and carrying. The rate is generally from 3^. to 4?., whether 

 reckoned by the acre or the hundred loads. 



The regular servants on a medieval farm, to repeat what was 

 stated above, were the bailiff, ploughmen, drivers 3 carters, shep- 

 herds (sometimes one to the ewes, and another to the wethers), 

 ox or cowherd, pig-keeper, and daye or dairy-woman, called 

 sometimes ancilla. Occasionally a cook was hired in harvest, 

 and, in rare cases, we find gardeners, and even vine-dressers. 

 At Elham, where many horses were bred, or at least bought 

 and sold, we find other officers, called equitatores, by which 

 must, I suppose, be meant grooms ; tassatores, one of whom 

 acts as farrier ; claviger, and the like. 



