I 



THE BLACK DEATH 41 



\<rhen hay was almost the sole winter food of stock ; in some 

 places it was eight or ten times as valuable as the arable.^ 

 The pasture on the Hospitallers' estates was divided into 

 several and common pasture, the former often reaching is. an 

 acre and sometimes 2s., the latter rarely exceeding 4^. The 

 most usual way, however, of stating the value of pasture was 

 by reckoning the annual cost of feeding stock per head, cows 

 being valued at 2s., oxen at is., a horse at a little less than an 

 ox, a sheep at id. The reign of Edward HI was a great 

 era for wool-growers, and the Hospitallers at Hampton in 

 Middlesex had a flock of 2,000 sheep whose annual produce 

 was six sacks of wool of 364 lb. each, worth £4 a sack, which 

 would make the fleeces weigh a little more than i lb. each. 

 The profit of cows on one of their manors was reckoned at 

 2s. per head, on another at 3^. ; and the profit of 100 sheep 

 at 20J.2 The wages paid to the labourers for day work were 

 2d. a day, and we must remember that when he was paid by 

 the day his wages were rightly higher than when regularly 

 employed, for day labour was irregular and casual. The 

 tenants about the same date obtained the following prices for 

 some of their stock ^ : — 



£ s. d. 



A good ox, alive, fatted on com 140 



„ „ ,, not on com .... 16 o 



A fatted cow 120 



A two-year-old hog 34 



A sheep and its fleece 18 



A fatted sheep, shorn 12 



„ goose 03 



Hens, each * 02 



20 eggs 01 



In the middle of the fourteenth century occurred the famous 

 Black Death, the worst infliction that has ever visited England. 



' Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century, p. 147. 



* Hospitallers in England, p. xxvi. ' Ibid. pp. 1, li. 



* Poultry-keeping was wellnigh universal, judging by the number of 

 rents paid in fowls and eggs. 



