THE PRICE OF LIVE STOCK. 33! 



In constructing the table at the conclusion of this chapter, 

 I have thought it best to take the highest prices of the year. 

 The reason will be obvious to my reader. I shall in this way 

 be best able to contrast averages before and after the fall in the 

 value of money. 



CATTLE. Various names are given to cattle. Besides the 

 common names of oxen, cows, bulls, and calves, we read of 

 steers, bovetti and bovettae, boviculi, buculi, annales or yearlings, 

 juvenci and juvenculae, stirks, stirketts, stots (a name used also 

 for common cart-horses), animalia, twynters, bullocks, heifers, 

 kyes or kine, whyes. Sometimes the steers are described as 

 northern, and heifers are also called Hetfers and Hechfarres. 

 Oxen are further described as intended for draught or plough- 

 ing. Cows are bought and sold either dry or barren, in calf, 

 with calf, or in milk, and sometimes the age of the calf is 

 given. Bulls, as in the earlier period, are always cheap. They 

 are bought either for breeding or for the table, at least it seems 

 that some considerable purchases at abbeys and colleges must 

 be for the latter end, if we can interpret the seventy-one tauri 

 bought at Osney in 1510 to be bulls. Setting these aside, 

 among which some are bought at z6s. 8^f., the highest priced 

 bulls which I have found in the first 140 years of this enquiry 

 are, one in 1401 at 12.$-. id., in 1521 at 15^., in 1528 at 13^.4^., 

 in 1536 at iSs., and in 1538 at 13.$-. ^d. In 1572 a bull is 

 bought at 40^-., in 1582 two at 39^. and 37^. %d. As a rule, 

 however, los. is the maximum price of the animal, though it is 

 frequently as low as 6.?. %d. t and occasionally is much cheaper. 

 Only 128 have been found in the first 140 years, and three 

 only in the last forty-two. We may infer then that no attempt 

 was made to effect a selection of breeds in cattle, and that the 

 maintenance of a bull being a personal loss to the owner of the 

 animal, the keep of a bull was sometimes, as we know it to 

 have been, the obligation on a landowner, sometimes a common 

 charge on the whole parish. 



Cows are dearer than bulls, though not much dearer, while 

 oxen, especially if in condition, are double the price of 



