138 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



their incomes by turning corn-dealers, even selling such small 

 quantities as pecks of peas, bushels of rye, and half pecks of 

 oatmeal. From the accounts of one of them, Henry Best,^ of 

 Elmswell, we learn many valuable details concerning farming 

 in Yorkshire about 1641. It was the custom to put the 

 ram to the ewes about October i8, but Best did so about 

 Michaelmas, and generally used one ram to 30 or 40 ewes, and 

 he considered it necessary that the ewes should be two-shear. 

 ' Good handsome ewes ', he says, could have been bought at 

 Kilham fair for 3^'. 6d. each, a price far below the average of 

 the time. As for wages, mowers of grass had \od. a day, and 

 found their own food and their scythes, which cost them about 

 IS. ^d. each. Haymakers got 4d. a day, and had to ' meat 

 themselves ' and find their own forks and rakes. Shearers or 

 reapers were paid from Sd. to lod., and found their own sickles ; 

 binders and stackers, Sd.; mowers of haver', or oats, lod., a good 

 mower cutting 4 acres a day. In 1641 he sold oats for 14s. a 

 quarter, best barley for 22s., rye 2ys. 6d., wheat 30.y.^ The 

 roads were dreadful, and produce nearly all sent to market on 

 pack-horses. 'Wee seldome send fewer than 8 horse loads to the 

 market at a time, and with them two men, for one man cannot 

 guide the poakes (sacks) of above four horses. When wee 

 sende oats to the market wee sack them up in 3 bushel poakes 

 and lay 6 bushels on a horse ; when wee sende wheate, rye, or 

 masseldene (rye and wheat) and barley to market wee put it 

 into mette poakes (a bushel sacks), sometimes into half quar- 

 ter sacks, and these we lay on horses that are short coupled 

 and well backed.' When the servants got to market they were 

 charged a halfpenny a horse for stabling and hay, but if they 

 dined at the inn they paid nothing for their horses, and their 

 dinners cost them 4^. a head. Butter was sold by the lb., or the 

 ' cake ' of 2 lb., and in the beginning of Lent was 5^. a lb., by 

 April ao, ^d., in the middle of May, 2ld. When William Finder 



^ Farming and Account Books of Henry Best of Elmswell, 1641. 

 Surtees Society, xxxiii. 157. ^ Ibid. p. 99. 



