18 THE MANORIAL SYSTEM 



source of profit to the lord and of loss to the tenant. Prodigious 

 numbers of pigeons were kept ; not only were they eaten, but 

 their dung was prized as the most valuable of all manures. The 

 privilege of keeping a pigeon-house was confined to manorial lords 

 and jealously guarded, and every manor had its dove-cote. The 

 story of the French Revolution shows how bitterly the peasants 

 resented the plunder of their hard-earned crops by the lord's 

 pigeons. Doubtless many a British peasant in mediaeval times 

 was stirred to the same hostility by the same nuisance. 



To the produce of the crops and the live-stock of the demesne 

 must be added game, rabbits from the " conygarth " or warren, 

 cider from the apples, oil from the nuts, honey and wax from the 

 bee-hives, and sometimes grapes from the vineyards. Bee-keeping 

 was an important feature of agricultural industry. The ancient 

 proverb says : " He that hath sheep, swine, and bees, sleep he, 

 wake he, he may thrive." Honey, besides being the only sugar, 

 was invaluable in the still-room, and in the arts of the apothecary, 

 physician, and " chirurgeon." It was an ingredient in mead and 

 metheglyn. It was used in embalming, in medicines, and in such 

 decoctions as mulse water, oenomel, honey water, rodomel, or 

 quintessence. Wax was not only necessary for the candles of the 

 wealthy, but, like honey, was largely used in mediaeval medicine. 

 Mixed with violets, it was a salve : it was also one of the ingredients 

 of " playsters, oyntementes, suppositories, and such like." In 

 some districts of England, vineyards formed part of the equipment 

 of manors ; one was made by Lord Berkeley towards the close of 

 the reign of Edward III., and his biographer suggests that he 

 learned the " husbandry . . . whilst hee was prisoner in ffrance or 

 a Traveller in Spaine." Few great monasteries were without vine- 

 yards, which are mentioned thirty-eight times in Domesday Book. 

 It is not necessary to explain the disappearance of the vine by a 

 change of climate. Wine was then often sweetened with honey 

 and flavoured with blackberries and spices. Unless it came from 

 abroad, it was rarely drunk in its pure state. It would, therefore, 

 be unsafe to found any theory of climatic change upon the pro- 

 duction of a liquid which, in its natural state, may frequently have 

 resembled vinegar. 



Besides the produce of the live-stock and crops of his demesne, 

 the lord of the manor had other sources of revenue. There were 

 the fixed money or produce rents for their land paid by free tenants 



