MINOR AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS. 315 



from 4^. $\d. a quarter to 28^. But the account includes some 

 of the dear years. Four times it is said to be seed. It is 

 likely that this produce was grown upon some light soil, fit 

 for hardly anything else, and was used to fatten hogs with, or 

 to brew a common kind of beer. In 1597 occurs the entry of 

 ' broad barley,' likewise at Worksop. It is also cheap, and 

 may be a synonyme for bigg. 



MINOR LEGUMINOUS PLANTS. Beyond the ordinary beans 

 and peas, mostly used in the stable, and the latter also for 

 feeding pigeons, several other entries are made, some of which 

 are plainly, from their relatively excessive price, a superior 

 article for human consumption. They are vetches, tares, 

 ' stede ' peas, hasting peas, white peas, garden peas, house peas, 

 green peas, porridge or pottage peas, boiling peas, table peas, 

 Sandwich peas, Sandwich beans, Windsor beans, kidney beans, 

 and French beans. Besides these, there is an entry of pulse. 



Vetches were a very general crop in early English agricul- 

 ture, though not much breadth was sown. But they appear 

 to have been more rarely cultivated in later times, for I cannot 

 but think that they would have been found both green and 

 dry, in the haulm as well as threshed, in the stable accounts, 

 had their use been common. One entry in 1605, of a purchase 

 by Magdalen College, Oxford, of a bigata kguminum, is 

 probably one of green or dry vetches in the pods. Nor am I 

 quite certain that vetches and tares are the same product. 

 They are very commonly synonymes. Vetches only occur 

 four times, two being very early, two very late in the period. 

 Tares occur seven times between 1611 and 1702. The 

 average of the first two entries of vetches, both in cheap years, 

 is i i s. %d. ; of the last two, 22s. io\d. The average of the tares 

 is 2os. ioj</. Vetches are once bought at Oxford; tares 

 once at Cambridge. Both are purchased at Harting in Sussex. 

 Pulse is bought at Oxford in 1627, a cheap year, at i6s. t beans 

 at the same place being at 1 8j. %d. An acre and a-half of tares 

 is bought by Eton in 1651, at 405. the acre. 



Hasting peas are found in the early years, in 1599 at i6s. 



