102 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



mastlin, a mixture of wheat and rye, though the poorer 

 fafmer on uninclosed land ate bread made of beans. 



The poor ate bread of rye or barley, and in time of dearth 

 of beans, peas, and oats, and sometimes acorns.^ According 

 to Tusser, the iaboiirer was allowed roast meat twice a week, 



' Good plowmen looke weekly of custom and right. 

 For roast meate on Sundaies, and Thursdaies at night' ; 



and Latimer calls bacon 'the necessary meate' of the labourer, 

 and it seems to have been his great stand-by then as now. 

 The bread and bacon were supplemented largely by milk and 

 porridge.^ The statute, 24 Hen. VUI, c. 3, says that all food, 

 and especially beef, mutton, pork, and veal, 'which is the 

 common feeding of mean and poor persons,' was too dear for 

 them to buy, and fixed the price of beef and pork at Id. a lb. 

 and of mutton and veal at |^. a lb. ; but the statute, like 

 others of the kind, was of little avail, and the price of beef 

 was in the middle of the sixteenth century about id. a lb. or 

 Sd. in our money. As the average price of wheat at the same 

 date was 14^'. a quarter, or about 112s. in our money, fresh 

 meat was comparatively much cheaper, and it is no wonder 

 that even the farmer could not afford wheaten bread regularly. 

 Moryson, writing in Elizabeth's reign, says ' Englishmen eate 

 barley and rye brown bread, and prefer it to white as abiding 

 longer in the stomeck and not so soon digested '.^ 



A tithe dispute at North Luffenham in Rutlandshire throws 

 considerable light on the financial position of the various 

 classes interested in the land about 1576. At the trial several 

 witnesses were examined, who all made statements as to the 

 amount of their worldly wealth, and it is a noteworthy fact 

 that even the humblest had saved something ; perhaps 

 because there was no poor law or State pension fund to dis- 

 courage thrift.^ Thomas Blackburne, a husbandman, who 



^ In the reign of Mary, 'the plain poor people did make very much of 

 acorns.' Cullum, Hawsted, p. 181. ^ Eden, State of the Poor, i. 116. 



' Itinerary, iii. 140. * Rutland Magazine, i. 64. 



