WALTER OF HENLEY 37 



I283. 1 Cider was also drunk, and was sold at Exminster in 

 Devonshire in 1286 at \d. a gallon, and apples fetched id. 

 a bushel. Thorold Rogers 2 says that wheat was the chief 

 food of the English labourer from the earliest times until 

 perhaps the seventeenth century, when the enormous prices 

 were prohibitive ; but this statement must be taken with 

 reserve, as must that of Mr. Prothero 3 that rye was the 

 bread-stuff of the peasantry. Where the labourer's food is 

 mentioned as part of his wages, wheat, barley, and rye all occur, 

 wheat and rye being often mixed together as ' mixtil '; and it 

 is most probable that in one district wheat, in another one of 

 the other cereals, formed his chief bread-stuff, according to 

 the crop best adapted to the soil of the locality. 



Walter of Henley mentions wheat as if it was the chief crop, 

 for he selects it as best illustrating the cost of corn-growing 4 ; 

 and from the enormous number of entries enumerated by 

 Thorold Rogers in his mediaeval statistics it was apparently 

 more grown than other cereals. The chief meat of the lower 

 classes then, as to-day, was bacon from the innumerable herds 

 of swine who roamed in the woods and wastes, but in bad 

 years, when food was scarce, the poor ate nuts, acorns, fern 

 roots, bark, and vetches. 5 



As the cattle of the Middle Ages were like the mountain 

 cattle of to-day, so were the sheep like many of the sheep to 

 be seen in the Welsh mountains; yet, unlike the cattle, an 

 attempt seems to have been made, judging by the high price 

 of rams, to improve the breed ; but they were probably poor 

 animals worth from is. to is. 6d. each, with a small fleece 

 weighing about a pound and a half, worth $d. a Ib. or a little 



more. 



1 Domesday of S.Paul, Camden Society, p. li. 



2 History of Agricultitre and Prices, i. 26. 

 8 Pioneers of Agriculture, p. 13. 



4 Ed. Lamond, Royal Historical Society, p. 19. 



5 Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century, p. 93. 



