CHAPTER IX. 



HAY AND STRAW. 



THE information which my accounts supply me for these 

 articles of agricultural produce is, especially for the former, 

 copious and fairly continuous, for I have failed to find entries 

 for only eight of the 182 years, and in many of the years 

 which give returns there are dated purchases of hay. 



In calculating the averages, which will be found, as far as 

 the general inference goes, to tally closely with those of corn, 

 both as to the decennial periods and the contrast established 

 above between the first hundred-and-forty and the last forty- 

 two years, I have necessarily taken the load only, described in 

 my accounts as carectata, plaustrata, and bigata, as well as later 

 on by the English word < load.' At Oxford and in the earlier 

 part of the period the word arconius is obviously the same as 

 the more general synonyms. The load was doubtlessly a 

 weight, and in all probability was the same as the modern 

 load of old hay, 19 J cwts. or a fother 1 . 



Most of the entries are of the consumption of the Colleges 

 in Oxford and Cambridge, especially in the latter. These 

 corporations were constantly engaged in the survey of their 

 estates, and in the collection of their rents and dues. That 

 their Terriers were carefully copied, preserved, and compared 

 with the land which they described, is well known, and was 

 to be expected. They had to know the lands they owned, in 

 order to distrain for rent on them ; and as there was hardly 

 an estate from which fee farm rents, annuities, pensions, and 



1 It was sometimes bought by the fother: e. g. at Wearmouth in 1480. 



