FLAX 105 



between the tips.' Cows had doubled in price in his time, 

 from %6s. %d. to 53^. ^d. 'Our horses are high, but not of 

 such huge greatness as in other places,' yet remarkable for the 

 easiness of their pace ; and 5 or 6 cart-horses will draw 30 cwt. 

 a long journey, and a pack-horse will carry 4 cwt. without 

 any hurt, a statement which is one more proof of the poorness 

 of the roads. The chief horse fairs were at ' Ripon, Newport- 

 pond, Wolfpit, and Harborow ', where horse dealers were as 

 great rogues as ever. Pigeons were still the curse of the 

 farmer, and their cotes were called dens of thieves. 



By the end of the sixteenth century, certainly by the first 

 quarter of the seventeenth, the villein, who in the Middle Ages 

 had formed the bulk of the population, had disappeared. 1 It 

 is probable that even at the beginning of the Tudor period 

 the great majority of the bondmen had become free, and that 

 the serf then only formed one per cent, of the population, and 

 many of those had left the country and become artizans in 

 the towns, for personal serfdom had outlasted demesne 

 farming ; though even there the heavy hand of the lord was 

 upon them and enforced the ancient customs. 



In the sixteenth century flax was apparently grown upon 

 most farms, the statutes 24 Hen. VIII, c. 4, and 5 Eliz., c. 5, 

 obliging every person occupying 60 acres of tillage to have 

 a quarter of an acre in flax or hemp, and Moryson says the 

 husbandmen wore garments of coarse cloth made at home, 

 so did their wives, and ' in generall ' their linen was coarse and 

 made at home. 2 



' Good flax and good hemp to have of her own 

 In Maie a good housewife will see it be sowne ', 



sings Tusser. The statute of Henry VIII enjoined the sowing 

 of flax and hemp because of the great increase of idle people 

 in the realm, to which the numerous imports, especially linen 

 cloth, contributed. 



1 Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (New Series), xvii. 235. 

 8 Moryson, Itinerary (ed. 1617), iii. 179- 



